


Fly Together

by rickyisms



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Angst, Basically the Mighty Ducks, Drinking, Gen, Jack Zimmermann's Overdose, Jack Zimmermann's year off, Mental Health Issues, Therapy, at first, peewee hockey coach, valuable lessons taught by children
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-30
Updated: 2020-07-20
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:48:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 20,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24459973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rickyisms/pseuds/rickyisms
Summary: Jack is a mess after he gets out of rehab. He doesn't know what he's doing with his life, all he knows is that he doesn't want to hurt anyone ever again. Nothing's working.Then, he gets himself in trouble and winds up the coach of the Greater Montreal Area Minor Co-Ed Hockey League's most hopeless team. What happens next surprises everyone (everyone who doesn't know the plot of The Mighty Ducks that is)[i am so sorry for how infrequently this updates]
Relationships: Past Jack Zimmermann/Kent Parson
Comments: 21
Kudos: 40





	1. A Never Was

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack Zimmermann will not go back to rehab.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so this isn't going to be a sad or an angsty fic or anything, but Jack does have a lot of issues and they are laid pretty bare in this chapter, so trigger warnings are in the notes at the end.   
> The Mighty Ducks is a good fun movie, but like, it also starts with the main character getting a DUI so...

When Jack Zimmermann gets out of rehab, the thing he wants most in the world is to forget he was ever there in the first place. There was a lot about it that sucked, but the thing he hated most of all about it, is that he wasn’t an  _ addict,  _ he wasn’t like them. 

He figured out soon enough that they wouldn’t let him leave until he could begin every meeting with a “Hi my name’s Jack and I’m addicted to benzodiazepines,” but he never really believed it. 

It wasn’t the same, he told himself, taking his Ativan with vodka sometimes. Not the same as the girl who came in with track marks on her arms, the boy who had the room next to his who shook because he couldn’t drink. He’s not an addict, as much as they kept telling him he was. 

Sure, he couldn’t sleep the first week in the hospital or the second week in an inpatient facility while they adjusted his dose and watched him while he swallowed his meds. His fingers twitched for a pill bottle that they no longer trusted him to hold for himself. But still. It’s not like it was cocaine, not like everyone said. 

He spent his eighteenth birthday in a hospital bed and he never intends on going back. 

He doesn’t remember the first ten days in the hospital, or the next ten, or the ten after that. It starts to come into focus around day 27. 

He remembers being  _ so tired,  _ he remembers only being allowed to have his phone to call his parents. He remembers choking down apple sauce with anxiety medication hidden inside. He remembers the sound of his parents hushed, fighting in the hallway. He remembers hearing his father yelling at his agent over the telephone. He remembers that his inpatient group outright banned any mention of the draft. 

He remembers hunching over the toilet dry heaving trying to sob, nothing coming out. He remembers thinking about Kenny… Kent. Kent Parson. NHL player. Kent Parson who has everything he should have. It keeps him up at night, imagining the desert, the lights of the strip and the black of the jersey he should be wearing. At night he dreams about skating on the ice that should have been his. More often than not, he wakes up sweating, crying, shaking. He thinks the desert might have suffocated him. He can only imagine what it’s doing to Kenny… Kent. Kent Parson. NHL player. 

He remembers not remembering when they ask him if it was an accident or not. He remembers trying to remember. He remembers tossing and turning thinking about what both options would mean. 

So yeah, he wants to forget.

They let him go home in October, just in time for Thanksgiving. He has to see a therapist every week, his mother holds his pills, though he doesn’t see much need for them anymore. 

Hockey made him anxious, and Jack Zimmermann isn’t a hockey player anymore. 

His mother sets up the old guest room for him. 

“I just want to clean your room,” she says. 

Jack knows she’s afraid of what Jack might have hidden under his mattress, in the box under his desk. He knows for a fact that there’s a mickey of vodka hidden in a pair of winter boots, half drunk from the night he and Kent ditched a party and came back to Jack’s place. They’d gotten shitfaced and laughed quietly to themselves, they’d kissed underneath the glow in the dark stars stuck to Jack’s ceiling, never taken down after his brief but intense space phase in third grade. Jack had felt soft, secure. Like he and Kenny… Kent, were the only two people in the world. 

There are other things he wants to forget too. Not just for his own sake.

When Jack had his one on one counseling session, they’d asked him to make a list of things he felt defined him. He came up with something that he thought was passable. 

-My name is Jack Zimmermann

-I play hockey.

-My dad used to play hockey.

-I have anxiety. 

-When I was 17, I overdosed.

-My best friend i s  was Kent Parson.

-I really like world war one documentaries.

-I think this is stupid

-I don’t want to make my mom upset.

Then they asked him to cross off everything that had to do with hockey or the overdose. They told him to focus on those things. Who are you without hockey?

He watches a lot of world war one documentaries in the week after getting home. It took some convincing, but his mother agreed to let him have his laptop in his room after he promised he wouldn’t use it to watch highlights or google himself. 

He notices how much he promises his mother things, how often he brushes aside her concerns, assures her that his therapy sessions are going just fine. He still works out, because his doctors think exercise might help clear his mind, but he’s not allowed to time his runs anymore. He’s not allowed to log his calories in his meal plan app either. Numbers, tracking, anything that could be interpreted as even a little bit competitive, none of it’s allowed. 

He’ll figure out what he’s doing with the rest of his life eventually, but right now, he’s going to watch  _ Band of Brothers _ in his dimly lit bedroom for the third time this month. 

He hears his mother across the hall, putting things in boxes, folding old clothes to donate. He wonders how long until she finds the bottle of vodka, how long until she finds the drawer that Jack set aside for Kenny...Kent’s clothes. There’s a roll of condoms stashed under his mattress, he wonders if they’ve already found those. He wonders if they’ll ask him about it when they put the pieces together. That’s a thought that makes him want to throw up. 

He does his best to settle his stomach,because he feels like sudden vomit/sobbing would just earn him a one way ticket back to rehab.

“Jack honey,” his mother’s voice tears him out of his own self pity, he looks up from the laptop screen where he’s watching the fourth episode of band of brothers. He hits the spacebar to pause it. 

He looks up. 

“I just wanted to know if these still fit you?” she holds up a pair of shorts that Jack hasn’t worn since he was 12. He shakes his head. 

His mother folds them, holding them to her chest, she nods to herself, “Thought so,” she mutters, she looks like she wants to say something else, but Jack’s not sure how to ask her, “Um,” she starts, “Your father and I were talking about ordering in tonight, would you be interested in that,” she never used to call Bob “Jack’s father,” it was always “Papa,” or occasionally “Dad,” but never so cold. 

Jack wishes he hadn’t done it, not because of how it affected him, but because of how everything around him changed. He can’t help but feel like he’s hurt everyone, like he’s ruined everyone else’s lives along with his own. 

“Sure,” Jack says.

“Great!” His mom says, it’s too cheerful, “Maybe we could watch a movie together too,” Alicia says. 

“Sure,” Jack says again. 

“Okay, well,” she folds the shorts again, unfolds them and then re-folds them, “I’ll let you know when dinner’s here.”

Jack hasn’t said more than a handful of sentences to Bob since he’s gotten home.They were never the kind of father and son who had big meaningful conversations, they never talked about feelings or life plans or anything much beyond hockey. Without hockey they have nothing. Jack knows that Bob sits in the basement watching games on his own, he knows that he falls asleep down there more often than in the bed he shares with Jack’s mom. 

Bob wasn’t around much when Jack was a kid. Jack’s interests shifted as he grew up, but hockey never changed, it was always a constant.

Until now. He knows that everything has changed, and he just wants it back to  _ normal _ . For them at least. He has never wished so badly, that he was better at pretending to be okay. 

The episode ends and he gets halfway through the next one when Alicia calls his name from the bottom of the stairs. 

“Dinner!” she shouts. 

Jack, Alicia and Bob sit in the theatre in the basement, it’s the one place in the house that hockey remains. Bob’s trophy case hangs behind the bar, there’s a framed photo of his cup winning Montreal team. Jack remembers sneaking down here to run his hands over the jewels of Bob’s old cup rings, slipping them on his fingers and imagining the roar of the crowd as he hoisted Lord Stanley. That’s not a dream he’s going to let himself have anymore. 

“I remember how much you loved the lemon chicken from the little place downtown, you always used to want seconds,” Alicia says. She’s been reminding Jack of what he was like when he was little, as if those memories haven’t been marred for her, as if Jack hasn’t been a mess of anxiety for as long as he can remember. 

“Thanks mom,” Jack says. 

Bob smiles. He doesn’t look up at Jack. 

Jack doesn’t eat seconds, he doesn’t even really finish his first helping. His father has his eyes trained on the movie. They used to talk, Bob used to laugh at a joke and then repeat it to himself, look back to Jack to see if he was laughing too. He usually was, or at least laughing at Bob and his unrelenting dad energy. Alicia used to point something out about one of the actors that Bob and Jack would have never noticed, a soda can turned one way in one scene and another in the next. She’s also the kind of person who insists they sit through the credits to “honour the work.” Now that they’re gone Jack misses the little things he once found annoying.

“I think I’m going to turn in early,” Jack says. 

They’re only about halfway through the John Wick movie when he stands up. He doesn’t think he can take another second of the quiet. 

Alicia reaches up and pats Jack on the thigh as he walks past them. 

“G’night, son,” Bob says. 

“Good night dad,” Jack says. 

He hears his parents fighting an hour later, they must have managed to sit through the movie before finally snapping. Jack sits at the top of the stairs and listens to them. He feels like a child, like when he used to sit at the top of the stairs trying to hear his parents hushed conversations in the kitchen. Back then though, he overheard their big plans, made in the kitchen. They talked about Alicia’s movies, Jack’s hockey career, and he could hear the smiles on their faces when they talked. Sometimes he could hear the worry sometimes there was bickering, but it was always from a place of love. He remembers hearing them make up just as often as they broke down. Now, all he can hear is hushed shouting. 

“He’s not happy, Robert,” he hears his mother say. He’s never heard her call Bob “ _ Robert _ ”. 

“What am I supposed to do about that Alicia? I don’t know? I’m not his fucking doctor,” Bob hisses. 

“You're his father.”

“And I can’t make him happy! I don’t know what can at this point, Alicia.” 

Jack bites his own lip so hard he tastes blood

He hears Bob continue, “You told me he was anxious, so we got him a fucking doctor, we put him on those pills. I have done  _ everything  _ I know how to do.”

“He was happy when he was playing,” Alicia mumbles. 

“Was he?” Bob asks, “Everything I thought I knew about him turned out to be pretend.”

Jack doesn’t think that’s fair. Clenches his fist. He thinks about all the things he’s hidden from Bob, all the things he still hasn’t told him in person. His fingernails dig into his palms. 

“Why don’t you find out,  _ talk  _ to your son. About something other than hockey.”

“All we ever talked about was hockey,” Jack hates the hiss in Bob’s voice. 

He hates that Bob’s right even more, though. 

“I wish you’d just admit that you want him playing hockey again,” Alicia says. 

“That’s not true,” Bob says. 

“Admit it!” Alicia insists. 

“I won’t!” 

“Robert,” her voice is threatening. 

“It’s not true, Alicia,” he says, “Because I want that boy as far away from the ice as possible for the rest of his natural fucking life. I never want him to pick up another hockey stick, I don’t want him to lace up a pair of skates. I never want that game to touch him ever again,” Jack can hear the hurt in his dad’s voice.

His stomach drops at the thought that he might have caused it, 

“I don’t know what to do. I never thought anything bad could happen as long as you love the game. That’s what they always told us. That the love of the game makes everything worth it. How the hell am I supposed to love the game anymore? How do I show up at alumni events and shake hands and call in to Sportsnet panels? How?”

“Bob,” His mother’s crying, Jack can hear the shake in her voice. 

“They said it was hockey,if it was hockey that… I don’t know. If it was hockey that triggered him, I never want him near it again.”

Jack doesn’t have a name for whatever’s bubbling in his stomach, whatever this thing that makes him want to throw up and run away and scream is. On some level, he thinks, Bob has to be right. That it was hockey that triggered most of his panic attacks. 

Then he remembers the panic attack he’d had before the memorial cup. It had been because he’d watched a draft ranking video the night before and the stupid music they used in the background was stuck in his head. He remembers forgetting how to breathe, the feeling of sheer helplessness. He remembers Kent’s hand, light on his back.He remembers the sharp intake of breath as he realized that someone might be looking at them. He remembers his head spinning around and around and around, thought after thought about the draft and Kent and Bob and Las Vegas. And he remembers getting on the ice and all of that just going away. 

“I don’t know what to do other than keep him away from it.”

Jack stands up. Done listening, he walks down the upstairs hallway, into his old bedroom, he walks directly to the closet, picks up that mickey of vodka, he tucks it into his pocket and takes his car keys off the hook above his closet. He stops to notice the old hockey trophies packed away in a cardboard box by his old bed. 

He slams the door, storms down the stairs. His parents are standing in the kitchen, blank faced. They must have heard him slam the door. 

“Going for a drive,” he says and doesn’t wait for an answer. 

“Jack!” his mother’s and father’s voice blend together in concern. 

He doesn’t cry right away, his first priority is getting as far away from his parents’ house as possible. He doesn’t know where he’s going, just that he needs to get there and fast. He races through the suburbs, needs to get away from the stifling feeling of his parents’ house. He doesn’t realize that the radio’s on until he hears the song blaring through the speakers.

_ 'Cause we belong together now, yeah _

_ Forever united here somehow, yeah _

_ You got a piece of me _

_ And honestly _

_ My life (my life) would suck (would suck) without you _

Jack looks over at the passenger seat instinctively, expecting to see Kenny with his hat on backwards, arm hanging out the window, screaming his head off to one of his favourite songs. And of course he’s not there. Kenny’s an NHL star now. He’ll have played his first game by now. He’ll have new teammates, new linemates, new guys to sit in cars with and sing Kelly Clarkson songs with. Jack isn’t a part of that, he shouldn’t be. Because Kenny’s an NHL star and NHL stars don’t have sex with other guys. If he pretends it didn’t happen, maybe he can save Kenny, if he keeps ignoring the voicemails... Maybe Kenny can avoid being as fucked up as Jack feels. 

It’s a form of self harm, really, when he doesn’t turn off the radio, just lets the tears pour down his face as he screams his voice raw, pounds his fists against the steering wheel and reaches for the mickey in his pocket. The first sip of vodka burns his throat, the second goes down a little smoother, and by the time he drinks his third, he’s pulling into a high school parking lot, he doesn’t bother parking between the lines, just puts the car in park and pulls his cell phone out of his pocket. He looks at his voicemail, picks the most recent message, they’re all from Kenny. 

His eyes are blurred with tears and he wants to scream the second he hears Kenny’s voice. 

“Jack… please,” he starts, voice muffled by the phone. 

Jack’s throat is already raw, but he can’t make himself scream again. 

“Jack I don’t know if you changed your number or you just don’t want to talk to me, but if you get this, please call me back. Please Jack,” he has a catalogue of different messages from Kent. Sometimes Kent screams into the phone, calls him an asshole, or a monster, tells him he’s glad Jack doesn’t call him back. Sometimes Kenny just cries, wonders out loud if Jack can hear him. He can and he thinks he deserves it. 

Jack throws the phone down on the passenger seat. He can’t. It’s not that he doesn’t want to talk to Kenny, it’s that he thinks Kenny shouldn’t want to talk to him. Because Kenny has to be Kent Parson now. Jack won’t drag him back down. 

He walks away from the car, away from the phone, vodka in hand. He takes another swig. 

They’ll send him back for this, he knows it. He’ll end up locked in another room, forced to sit in a circle and declare “My name is Jack Zimmermann and I’m an addict.” 

Well, he figures, if he’s going back, he might as well go big. 

Jack realizes, as he trudges past the parking lot towards the school’s football field, that he’d attended classes here. In ninth grade before he’d been drafted to Rimouski. Before he’d become the face of a junior hockey franchise. 

He’s drinking the vodka like it’s water now. He feels safer. He misses the way the pills made him feel when they mixed with alcohol, confident and funny and secure. He’ll settle for the way vodka makes him feel, though, like nothing else matters. 

He climbs to the top of the bleachers. He remembers sitting here in grade 10, for one of the few football games he’d attended. He and a couple teammates had managed to convince a couple girls to come with them and Jack had spent the whole time sweating through his palms. The girl had been perfectly nice, and when they kissed under the bleachers, Jack had to admit, it felt nice, but he couldn’t get far enough out of his own head to enjoy it even a little bit. 

God he remembers so much. He wants everything gone, he wants his brain to be empty, wants the fuzziness to take over so he never has to form another painful memory ever again. So he never has to form another good memory that will one day be ruined by his own anxious brain ever again. 

He looks down at the bottle, it’s empty. He turns it over in his hand. He throws it, he lets out a sharp scream when it leaves his hand. It’s a noise of pain, frustration. He feels like an animal. A stupid, stupid, sad, animal. 

“Jack!” he hears his mother’s voice. 

It takes a minute for his eyes to focus, but he sees his parents standing at the bottom of the bleachers. He can read the expression on his mother’s face. Concern and sorrow. His father is harder to read. Anger? Fear? Acceptance? Disappointment? Jack’s not sure. 

“Sweetheart, please come down,” she’s clutching one of the buttons of her sweater. 

“Coming mama,” Jack didn’t know he would slur his words, it surprises him and it makes his mother flinch. 

He stands up, staggers slightly and falls back. He breaks his fall by grabbing on to one of the middle benches. The stairs are just in front of him, he can get there, probably.

He’s never seen his father move so fast, not on skates. Bob bounds up the steps, two at a time until he’s standing next to Jack. 

He doesn’t say anything as he tucks one arm under Jack’s shoulder and half carries him down the bleachers. He hears his mother sniffling, but his eyes are too heavy to look up at her. His heart is heavier. 

“I’m sorry, Papa,” Jack mumbles as his father maneuvers him into the backseat and buckles his seatbelt like he hasn’t done since Jack was four. 

He feels Bob shaking his head. 

Hockey was everything to Bob. Hockey’s given the Zimmermans everything they have. It was the first great love of his father’s life, and Jack feels like he’s stolen that from him. 

He’s tired. He’s always so tired. He doesn’t remember what it feels like not to be

Jack wakes up in his own bed, a tall glass of water next to him, he looks over at his clock radio, it’s not even one a.m.

There are two tylenol on his nightstand, he takes them dry before remembering to wash them down with the water. He walks out of his room and downstairs to the kitchen. His mother’s sitting at the table with her head in her hands. Jack walks up behind her, he feels like a small child again, apologizing for failing a math test. He holds his hands in front of himself, shoulders hunched. 

“I’m sorry, mama,” he says. 

Alicia just sighs. 

“Put the kettle on,” she says. 

Jack does as he’s told and fills their kettle halfway and sets in on the stove to boil. 

“Where’s Papa?”

“Your father went for a drive,” she says. 

“He’s coming back right?” Jack asks, tongue heavy in his mouth. He’s broken so many things already, he doesn’t want to add his parents’ marriage to that list. 

“Yes Jack, he just needed time to think.”

Jack can understand that. 

Alicia gets up, pulls two mugs from the cupboard. She looks down at one of the mugs in her hand,  _ “World’s best hockey mom,”  _ it says, she lets out a dry laugh, shakes her head, but sets it down on the counter anyway. She puts a peppermint tea bag in each and pours the boiling water over them. She hands a mug to Jack. He wraps his hands around the mug, looks down at the water as it gets darker and darker. 

“You scared me tonight,” Alicia says. 

“I’m sorry,” Jack doesn’t know if he’ll ever apologize enough.

“I know you are,” Alicia says, “You don’t need me to tell you how dangerous and reckless that was.”

The resigned tone of his mother’s voice is enough to feel like a punch in the gut, every word hurting in a different way. 

“We need to figure something out, Jack,” his mom says. 

Jack nods, “I know, mama.”

“Your father is happy to keep you at home. He doesn’t want you near hockey,” Alicia says. 

“Yeah, I heard,” Jack mumbles. 

“I thought so,” Alicia says. 

Jack holds the mug to his mouth, takes a small sip. 

“So then you know how he feels,” Alicia says. 

Jack nods. 

“I’m sorry you had to hear us fight,” Alicia says. 

“You think I’m not happy,” Jack says. 

Alicia chews on her bottom lip, “I’m not going to lie to you, that’s what I said.”

“Do you think that?”

Alicia nods, “You spend all day in your room, you shuffle around the house. I never see the light in your eyes anymore.”

Jack doesn’t know where he’d find it. He shrugs. 

“Jack, did hockey make you happy?” She asks. 

Jack half shrugs, half nods. 

“I don’t know what to do all day without it. But I don’t think I want it back,” It’s a lie. He’d give anything to put on a pair of skates again, to dust off his stick and just play. But for everyone else’s sake, he has to stay away.

“We’ll go talk to someone in the morning,” she says.

Jack rolls his eyes. 

“Jack, you have to.”

“Whatever,” Jack says. 

“You got drunk and got in your car,” she says. 

“You say that like it’s news to me.”

“Please don’t try to push me away by being hostile.”

Jack crosses his arms over his chest. 

“Which therapy session did they use that phrase in.”

“Jack!” she clenches her fist, her red manicure is chipping. 

“I’m fine,” Jack says and stands up. 

“I thought we agreed you were going to stop lying to me,” Alicia says. 

“Yeah, well, what do you expect from a liar.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> trigger warnings  
> -drinking  
> -internalized homophobia  
> -drinking and driving  
> -general bad mental health
> 
> I promise this gets so much more fun in the next chapter when the kids show up


	2. I hate kids. They're barely human

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Seven kids unleashes on the suburbs of Montreal, what could possibly go wrong?

“Oh my god run! Go! Go! Go!” a young boy’s voice carries over the street. 

“When I catch you, I’m calling your parents,” A man’s voice shouts after them. 

Four kids run down an alleyway, avoiding the angry adult. A girl who’s tall for her age leads the pack, she has red paint splattered over her hands,she’s giggling as her glittery shoes slap the pavement. She jumps and climbs to the top of the chain link fence at the end of the alley. She sits on top and turns around to see her friends huffing and puffing to keep up with her.

“Shelby! Wait up!” The boy behind her yells. 

“You’re so slow, Alex!” she shouts at them. 

“I tripped!” He protests. 

“Where’d you little shits go!” the man from earlier shouts. He’s standing at the end of the alley. 

“Oh crap!” Mickey, the boy standing beside Alex curses. 

“Over the fence,” the third boy, Pierre Ouelet points. 

“Way ahead of you,” Shelby teases and drops down to the pavement on the other side of the fence. Mickey hoists Alex over the fence, then Pierre. Mickey jumps last, narrowly avoiding the grip of the shopkeeper, “That’s what he gets for taking my ball!” Shelby giggles

“You little assholes,” his face is red, not only because he’s fuming, but also because the four friends had set a bucket of red paint above his door early in the morning and hidden out to watch it spill over his head. Overkill, maybe. Fun, definitely. 

“Come on, Gen and Robbie are waiting at the park,” Shelby’s still running, bouncing in her shoes. 

“Shelby, you’re a beast!” Alex shouts after her. 

The boys maintain a light jog all the way to the park. 

“If we keep jogging like this, maybe we can finish a game without someone throwing up!” Mickey says hopefully. 

“Yeah, right, McVee!” Pierre wheezes. 

Gen and Robbie are waiting at the park as promised. Both are hanging upside down from the monkey bars, staring directly into each other’s eyes. 

“Beat your record yet?” Mickey sits in the gravel below the monkey bars. 

Gen shakes her head, face turning purple. 

Robbie takes a sharp breath and falls from the monkey bars. He looks up and sees Shelby on top of the monkey bars. 

“No fair! You pushed me!” he shouts. 

“Should’ve held on tighter,” Shelby says, “I want a turn.”

“You could have just asked,” Robbie grumbles. 

“Not as fun!” Shelby grins. 

Gen immediately drops from the monkey bars, landing next to Robbie. 

“I refuse to compete with you, you’re a beast,” she says, looking up at Shelby. 

“Well then that just means I win!” Shelby declares. 

“You guys should’ve seen the look on his face,” Alex says. 

“My mom would kill me if I got in trouble,” Pierre says. 

“Well lucky we ran fast,” Alex shoots back, “Why didn’t you guys come?”

“I’ll come cause mischief next time, promise,” Gen says.

“You always say that,” Pierre points out.

“I like to keep you guessing,” Gen tosses her hair over her shoulder and smiles. 

“We have practice in 20 minutes,” Mickey says. 

“Does it count as practice if the coach never shows up,” Pierre flicks a piece of gravel from the ground. 

“Aw come on guys, my mom said she’d buy us pizza after,” Mickey coaxes. 

“Now you’re talking,” Alex smirks, he elbows his best friend, “Race you guys to the rink!” he shouts and scrambles to his feet. 

“You had a head start! That’s not fair!” Shelby shouts as she leaps to her feet. 

“Catch me then Shelbow!” Alex shouts. 

Gen rolls her eyes at a grinning Mickey and they take off. 

“Not fair! You guys know I’m slow!” Robbie groans. 

Mickey slows down so that Robbie can jog alongside him. 

Giggling and screaming at each other, they run down the street. 

Amanda Richard closes the curtains in her office as a handful of screaming kids run past. She rolls her eyes but smiles gently as she turns to face her client and his mother. If she had to guess, neither one of them has slept. 

“Thank you for fitting us in,” the client’s mother says. 

Amanda has been seeing Jack since he was 15, she’s watched him grow and shrink and insist everything was fine. When she got the email that Jack was being sent to an inpatient program, she wasn’t exactly surprised, devastated, but not surprised. She likes Jack, is the thing, he’s a good kid, kind, charming when he wants to be. 

“It’s no problem, Alicia. I wasn’t sure I’d be seeing you again,” she turns to Jack. 

“Well uh…” Jack starts. 

“I had just assumed you’d move to a different practice, that’s all,” Amanda smiles at Jack. She pushes her bangs out of her face, her short cropped hair is getting longer than she usually wears it. 

“Yeah well,” Jack shrugs, trails off in the middle of a sentence he wouldn’t have finished anyway. 

“Alicia, do you mind if Jack and I talk alone this session. We can talk about family sessions later if you’d like,” Amanda smiles. 

Alicia nods, kisses Jack on the top of his head before she politely escorts herself from the room. 

“Hi, Jack,” Amanda smiles. 

“Hello,” Jack doesn’t look her in the eye. She wonders how long it’s been since he’s looked anyone in the eye. 

“So, how are you?” Amanda asks, simple. 

Jack’s looking at the wall,he shrugs, “My mom sent you the email, you know what happened.”

Amanada nods, “Yep,” she says, “I’m glad no one got hurt.”

She sees Jack clenching his fist. He’s always felt more guilt than most people she knows. 

“I uh, heard them fighting. About me,” Jack says. 

Amanda nods, “That can’t be easy to hear.”

“My mom doesn’t think I’m happy,” Jack says, bluntly. 

“What do you think.”

“Not a lot,” Jack shrugs, “I don’t think I feel much of anything right now.”

“What do you do with your time at home?” she asks. 

“Watch TV, mom’s been cleaning my room.”

“Is that all? What about hockey?” she asks. Hockey had always mattered to him, she remembers the twinkle in his eyes whenever he used to talk about it, the way his shoulders sagged when he talked about everything that surrounded the game. Amanda’s not really a hockey person, but she can understand what drives Jack to it. 

“I don’t play hockey anymore,” he says it with a firmness that seems to mean he’s been repeating it. 

“Okay,” Amanda says, “Did you make that decision?”

Jack shrugs, “Well I made a lot of decisions when I decided to overdose,” his arms are crossed over his chest. 

“That seems harsh,” she observes. 

He shrugs, “When I was in the hospital, we decided it would be best, if I didn’t play anymore. That it was better to remove the trigger than confront it. My dad thinks so too.”

“What do you think?”

“I think I spent my whole life learning how to be one thing, and now I’m not that anymore.”

“Well we can come up with a plan to find other things you enjoy,” she looks over at him, “But I don’t think that’s exactly what you want?”

Jack shrugs. 

“Do you think it was hockey that was your trigger, or was it the pressure?” she asks. 

“It’s the same thing, isn’t it?” Jack asks. 

“I can’t tell you that,” she says. 

Jack slouches further into his chair. 

“I can tell you what I think,” she says. 

Jack nods. 

“I don’t think there’s much use in trying to avoid hockey entirely for the rest of your life. And I think you need to find something you enjoy again. We can make a plan for your future, but I think you need something to do with your time while we do that,” Amanda says. 

“Okay,” Jack says sullenly. 

“Jack I need you to co-operate. I don’t think going back to inpatient treatment is going to be helpful for you at this point but if your parents decide to have you re-admitted then I can’t do much to help.”

Jack nods. 

“Have you ever thought about coaching?” Amanda asks. 

“I dunno,” Jack says, “Like how?”

“Well,” she says, “I have a niece playing hockey and one of the teams in her league is looking for an assistant coach.”

“And you want me to do that?” Jack asks. 

“I think it could be good for you,” She says. 

Jack shrugs, “Do I have another option?”

“You always have another option,” she says.

“Inpatient?” Jack asks. 

Amanda nods, “It’s up to you what you’d prefer.”

“I think you can guess,” Jack says. 

Assistant coaching some 12 year olds can’t be the end of the world, he thinks. He certainly prefers it to the other option.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the second chapter is quite short. And listen I KNOW that know actual therapist would prescribe "coach a hockey" team as treatment for depression, but this is based on the mighty ducks where gordon bombay got off for a DUI by coaching a hockey team, so let's just suspend some disbelief here.
> 
> I decided to post the second chapter today because it's short and the first one was kind of a bummer and I wanted y'all to be able to get more what the actual tone of the fic is going to be, which is way more clear in this chapter. 
> 
> Get ready for bitchy jack in the next chapter!


	3. I Knew We Forgot Something

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack's first practice is hell, the first game is something worse than that

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you didn't think Jack was gonna have a GOOD time coaching these hooligans did you?

There are half a dozen or so kids on the ice. It’s an outdoor rink and it was warm last night, so the ice in the middle has turned into more of a puddle than anything. The kids are skating… at least, doing what passes for skating. Two of the kids are wearing bike helmets, the little girl in goalie gear isn’t even in her net, just skating around the ice, chasing a dog around the ice. He groans, then remembers that he has to be here. 

His father had offered to drive him, but Jack had decided to walk on his own to spare the awkward conversation. He saw the hesitance in Bob’s eye last night when he told him he was going to start assistant coaching. Bob didn’t say anything about it, though, Jack could see him biting his tongue. 

Jack’s hands are in his pockets as he steps out onto the ice. The kids stop what they’re doing and approach him. 

“Hey!” One of the kids yells, “We have practice so you’ll have to wait for the ice,” He’s polite, Jack notices his yellow skate laces before anything else. 

“I am unfortunately aware of that fact,” Jack says, “Team 6, Lancombe, McVee, Shelbourne, Doshi, Ouelet, Wohl. I assume there are more of you.”

“Aw man!” one of the kids in the back says. 

“Where’s your head coach,” Jack asks. 

“Oh, he quit,” the girl in the goalie pads volunteers. 

Jack groans, “Well it looks like it’s just me,” Jack says, “Let’s get this out of the way. I don’t like hockey and I don’t want to be here,” Jack says, intending entirely to stick this out long enough to convince everyone he’s better, “Who’s your captain.”

A small kid with dark hair steps forward, “I’m Mickey.”

“Didn’t ask for your life story,” Jack says. 

“Charming,” the kid with the yellow skate laces rolls his eyes. 

“Watch it, kid,” Jack says, “you got a goalie?” he asks. 

“I’ve got my brother's pads,” one of the girls says, she’s using a forwards stick instead of a goalie stick, Jack notices. 

“Alright,” Jack says, “well, three on three. You, you, and you, against you, you and you,” 

“We have names,” Mickey sneers. 

“I’m sure you do,” Jack sits on the back of the bench at the edge of the ice, pulls his new cell phone out of his pocket.

“We’re kind of hopeless, just so you know,” another kid, Jack thinks he might be Alex, says. 

“Just play. No one’s hopeless,” Jack says. 

He looks down at his phone, opens up his email. There’s a new one from a scout every day. He could go play in europe if he wanted to, the KHL, there’s an Australian league who’d take him. He reads through the subject lines, looks up at the kids. 

So maybe some people are hopeless. They’re all sitting at centre ice, in a heap. Alex is shouting commentary and Mickey is doing his best to find the puck after someone flipped it into the snow. One of the girls skates over to him and stops. 

“Hi coach, I’m Gen,” she says. 

“Hello,” Jack says, “So what’s the situation?”

“We went 0-18 last year. We’re 0-6 so far but one of the games we almost scored and we only lost by four. Our old coach quit after that game. Said something about joining a lacrosse league.”

“Oh boy,” Jack groans to himself. 

He could join the KHL, change his name to Zack and start over. That might be easier than watching these kids play hockey for a season. 

Jack sticks two fingers in his mouth and whistles. 

The kids skate over to him. 

“Nice practice,” he says, flat. He’s not even wearing skates, it’s not like showing these kids what to do could fix the disaster

“Tell us how you really feel, Coach Z,” Alex smirks. 

“I’m reflecting on every terrible decision I’ve ever made that’s led to me standing right here.” Jack says, “And don’t call me that.”

“Are you coming to our game tomorrow, coach?” Mickey asks. 

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world, McVee,” Jack deadpans. 

He sees Mickey roll his eyes and turn back to the team, “Whatever,” he mumbles. 

Whatever is right, Jack thinks. He sits on the back of the bench until their parents pick them up. 

Coach Z. Fuck that. He’s not a coach, he’s not a role model for these kids. He’s selfish, and damaged and a terrible role model and he’ll tell himself that over and over again until it’s true. 

He turns around to watch the last kid get in the car and then shoves his hands back in his pockets and starts on his walk home. If this is punishment, he thinks, he could have done worse. 

“Jack!” His mother’s voice surprises him.

“Mom?” Jack jumps as he turns to see her pulling over towards the sidewalk.

“Need a lift?” She says in a way that makes it seem like she was just  _ out and about  _ and coincidentally bumped into Jack. Jack knows that’s not how it went down, that she looked at the practice schedule he’d been sent, memorized it and drove directly here from their house. 

Jack won’t start that fight though. 

“Sure,” he says. 

Alicia reaches over and unlocks the passenger side door. Jack hops in. God, he hates the hopeful look in her eyes as he buckles his seatbelt. 

“How was the first practice?”

“Good,” he lies. 

“I noticed you didn’t take your skates,” she says, the hope mixes with fear. 

“They’re dull,” Jack says. 

“We can take them to get sharpened,” Alicia says. 

“It’s okay. I can coach in sneakers. It’s just peewee,” he shrugs. 

“Oh well, we’ll think about it then,” Alicia keeps smiling. 

“Sure.”

Jack doesn’t speak french with his mom, he clips in and out of it with his dad, knows she understands but she never quite picked up speaking it as fluently as Bob or Jack. 

Jack hates how in between everything he’s always felt. Fragmented english, fragmented french, not quite Canadian, but definitely not quite an American. When he was a kid it was not quite and athlete, but not quite the chubby little nerd he always felt like. And then Kent… well, he doesn’t think about that “not quite,” anymore. 

“I still have to head to the grocery store, I can drop you off at home if you don’t want to come.”

“No,” Jack says, “I’ll come.”

It takes so little to make his mother’s eyes light up, and besides, it’s not like he has anything else to do. 

Grocery stores remind him of ice rinks. Maybe it’s the fact that the air conditioning always seems to be cranked, or that the floor is always smooth and shiny and everything looks white, it also has that harsh but subtle smell that’s one part bleach, one part sweat and one part produce that reminds him of the rink. 

His mother grabs a cart and he pushes while she looks over her list. She gently squeezes every orange before putting them into a produce bag. 

“Do you still like grapefruit?” she asks. 

Jack nods quietly. 

“Good,” she says, “Me too.”

“Papa doesn’t,” Jack says. 

“No, which means more for us,” Alicia’s joking smile is tentative, but Jack returns it. 

Jack stands with the cart by the seafood counter while Alicia looks through the glass at all the different options. He finds his eye drawn to the lobster tank, piled on top of each other, claws pinched together with rubber bands. Stuck. 

“You used to love watching those guys,” Alicia says, dropping her spoils in the cart. 

“I remember,” Jack says. 

Alicia smiles again, Jack leans against the handle of the cart as he pushes forward. 

“I was talking to your father about coming to watch the team’s first game. I think I can convince him,” she says, she doesn’t look at him, suddenly very fixated on the skim milk. 

“Don’t,” Jack says, “you don’t have to come,” he insists, “It’s just peewee.”

“Oh,” Alicia says, “Okay then, love. No problem,” she reaches up to ruffle his hair. For the first time since he was 13, Jack doesn’t swat her away. 

They put away the groceries together and Jack manages a tentative smile. His mother teases him about needing a haircut, he teases her back about buying four different kinds of salad dressing even though they still have two bottles in the fridge. She opens up a carton of orange juice and pours him a glass and he downs it in two gulps. 

“Thirsty?” she pokes fun. 

He shrugs, “Grocery shopping with you is an olympic sport.”

“Your father says the same thing, I think you boys just don’t know how to grocery shop.”

“Where is dad?” Jack asks.

“I think he’s in the office.”

The office, Jack hasn’t been in the office in months. When he was little, it was a place of reverence, he loved to run his hands along the cracked spine of Bad Bob’s books, all the autobiographies given to him by friends. He used to sit under the big oak desk while Bob talked on the phone. He thinks the Montreal Gazette would get a kick out of knowing that all those Bad Bob interviews had been conducted with Jack playing mini sticks in the corner of the office. He liked Bob’s Pittsburgh office better, he was still young when Bob got traded to Montreal but he remembers the big windows that looked out into the backyard. The desk was the same, but the room felt brighter. Bob’s Montreal office is in the basement. As he got older he started to dread the office. His dad managed his agent, but sometimes Jack would have to say something on the phone, sometimes he’d have to sit in one of the armchairs while Bob got this serious look on his face and started explaining something big and complicated that Jack knew was going to affect his future. 

They were in the office together constantly in the weeks before the draft. He’d been to the combine, done all his scouting interviews, he’d thought it was done. But Bob still felt like he had more to teach him, “be careful what you say in your draft interviews, Jackie. Never talk bad about anything.”

The room where Bob had sat him down and carefully taught him how to tie a tie became haunted. Alicia learned to stay away, because both Jack and Bob had tempers, and their tempers ran high in the months before the draft. 

He hasn’t been in the office since two days before the draft, the night before they’d flown to Ottawa, the night before Bob and Alicia had agreed to swap rooms and let Kent and Jack have Jack’s room all to themselves. Jack had sensed the worst kind of finality. Kent was out on the balcony when he did it. 

He doesn’t think about that anymore, he shakes his head at himself. He won’t go into that office just like he won’t sleep in his old room, just like he won’t call Kenny… Kent. Just like he won’t call Kent back. 

“Okay,” Jack says and it pulls himself out of his own brain, “Can I go for a run?” 

It’s stupid that he asks for permission, he’s 18, he can go for a run if he really wants to. He does it anyway because that’s what they agreed on. There’s no reason for his mom to say no. 

“Sure. I’m cooking tonight, just be home in time for dinner.”

“Got it,” Jack says. 

Jack sees how happy his mom is when she’s not worried about him so he puts on a good smile, he thinks it even makes it all the way up to his eyes. He feels nauseous, though, about everything. About sitting at the dinner table with his parents, whether Bob will take his plate and retreat to his office, whether he’ll hear his mom crying again. Whether she’ll walk into his room and find that roll of condoms, or the polaroid in his sock drawer that he’d taken at a party with Kent, drunk and hanging off of each other, Kent’s lips pressed to Jack’s cheek, or the sweater that Jack kept when Kent left it here, the note Kent had left him in his locker before a playoff game in their first season,  _ we got this, you got this.  _ He thinks he should burn that stuff when he gets a chance. It’s incriminating. Less important for Jack, he reminds himself. He doesn’t play hockey anymore, but the picture could cause trouble for Kent, and Jack’s already given him enough of that. 

He runs around the neighbourhood. It’s mostly quiet, he waves at a few neighbours getting home from work. They all know who he is, he tries not to think about how ofte they’ve read front page articles with his name in the headline. _Young_ _Zimmermann Wunderkind, Zimmermann first in the QMJHL draft, Zimmermann sets regular season scoring record, Zimmermann-Parson line a sure bet for Memorial cup success, Zimmermann grants exclusive father-son interview. Zimmermann found unresponsive in Ottawa hotel. Zimmermann ranking plummets 12 hours before draft. Zimmermann goes undrafted. Zimmermann struggling with cocaine issues, inside source says._

His dad used to get excited when they saw his name in the papers. 

He’s on solid ground at least. His feet slap against the sidewalk and he lets his breathing get ragged. He runs until he’s tired, pushes himself a little more than he really ought to, but not enough to make his mom worry, not enough to fuck this up. 

The referee skates over to the bench, Jack shakes his hand, he sees the way he looks twice at him, giving him a once over, making sure it’s really him. 

“Alright,” Jack says, “I assume you have a first line.”

Three kids jump over the boards, one day Jack will learn their names. 

He has never seen such a sorry excuse for positional play as all three kids line up at the faceoff dot. The other team laughs like they were expecting it. Jack can’t help but notice that the kids on the other team have real jerseys, names sewn on the back. A name instead of the number they were randomly assigned, they’re playing the Jaguars today. 

The three kids at the faceoff dot slip, stumbling into one another and completely crashing to the ice. 

“Criss,” he mutters to himself, rubbing his temples with his thumb and his forefinger. He hears the goal horn and the Jaguars celebrating. 

He watches goal after goal after goal get past Shelby. It’s like her limbs are always in the exact wrong place, like she has the  _ idea  _ of goaltending down, but in practice, she’s hopeless, flailing. 

“She ever calm down? Jack asks the nearest kid who happens to be Gen. 

Gen shakes her head before jumping over the boards and promptly earning a penalty for too many men. 

He stops keeping track of the goals against when they hit double digits. 

He snatches a stick from Mickey before they take the ice for the third. 

“It’s like you’re not even trying!” he says. 

“Ah coach, I think you’ll find we’re trying, it’s the whole succeeding part we’re having trouble with.”

“Great assessment, Alex. Learn to back-check as well as you back-talk and we might not embarrass ourselves totally.”

Alex rolls his eyes and sits down on the bench. 

“Hey, Coach,” Pierre Oulet tugs on his sleeve, Jack yanks away on impulse. 

“What, Pierre,” Jack snaps. 

“This is the part where we can call it, since the mercy rule doesn’t kick in until the third. But we can give up.”

“Do you want to give up?” Jack asks incredulously. 

“We usually call it a day if the other team gets above ten,” Robbie shrugs. 

“Are we quitters or are we hockey players?” Jack raises his voice. 

“I honestly don’t know the right answer here,” Alex says. 

“Hockey players! Play hockey!” Jack orders. He’s starting to understand why their old coach took up lacrosse. 

“Oh is that what we were supposed to be doing this whole time?” Alex shrugs his shoulders, big and overdramatic. 

“Watch it, Doshi,” Jack warns. 

Alex jumps out onto the ice mostly just to avoid the rest of Jack’s rage. 

They lose 17-0. Jack feels himself developing an ulcer. He has never, in his life, been good at losing, but it’s happened, from time to time. He’s not good at chess and his mother can always beat him, and of course Rimouski lost games when he was there. But never anything like this, never anything so brutal. And the kids don’t even  _ care.  _ He sees Mickey’s mom up in the stands, clapping despite the fact that her son was on the ice for 15 of the 17 goals, that one of the 17 goals went in off of his skates. 

They’re laughing and goofing off and Jack is ready to answer that email from the Czech hockey league if it’ll getting him out of here. 

“Did you even want to  _ win _ ?’ Jack finds himself shouting while simultaneously telling himself he doesn’t care that much. 

“We never win,” Mickey says, matter o-fact. 

“Was that really the best you could do?” Jack asks, “Are you happy with yourselves?” It’s a line Bob used to pull out that would make Jack sulk in the car the entire way back to the rink. 

Gen pops up behind Mickey, “We had fun.”

“Isn’t winning fun?”

“We wouldn’t know,” Alex says. 

Jack clenches his fist. 

“Mickey, honey, you ready to go?” Mickey’s mom calls from over the boards. 

His temper flares, "I was still talking to them," he says through clenched teeth. 

"What exactly do you have to say?" she says, eyebrow raised, a slightly bemused look on her face. 

"That this was embarassing!"

"It's rec league hockey, Coach Zimmermann, it's not that serious."

"They should want to win."

"Is that all that matters to you? Winning? Being first?"

Jack clenches his fist. 

"Come on mom, I'm ready to go," Mickey says. 

Mickey nods, the kids disperse from around him, like his words have absolutely zero sway over them. 

“Hey,” he hears the Dad coach’s voice next to him, “Good game, Zimmermann,” he holds out his hand for Jack to shake. 

Jack shakes it but doesn’t say anything. 

“Bit of a weird way to get back into the game,” he chuckles, “But hey, if it gets you back on an NHL roster,” he shrugs as he chuckles, “We don’t believe what the papers say. We know you’ve still got it in you,” he claps Jack on the shoulder like that’s supposed to make him feel better. 

He’s standing alone, breath ragged as the lights over the ice go off, he hears the zamboni start up from across the ice, sees the shadowed figure of the rink manager moving around in the distance. He clenches his fist, and he runs all the way home, car privileges still revoked. The cold is biting against his face and he wishes he’d worn gloves. He takes the stairs two at a time up to his bedroom, the old one. His mother’s not there, thankfully, some thing downtown with some producer of something, Jack didn’t ask for details. Jack had told her the game was going longer than it would, just so he could have a few hours peace,with Bob in his office and Alicia gone, thinking Jack was safe at his hockey game. 

There’s no one around to tell him no, he thinks as he snatches his skates and runs outside to the pond.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> anyway i'm pumped for the oc that shows up in the next chapter. also i am curious, how many of you have seen the might ducks and how many of you are just going with what i'm saying? Because I'm trying to mirror the events pretty closely but i don't think it matters if you've actually seen the movie or not.


	4. You Really Loved To Play, You Remember?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> all the chapter titles are quotes from TMD but I wanted to include a couple lines because they hit me in the heart so here it is  
> Hans: You scored 198 goals that season, it's a shame you quit you...  
> Gordon: Could've gone all the way. Yeah  
> Hans: No! You really loved to play. You Remember?

When Bob and Alicia bought the Montreal house, the realtor asked them to make a list. All the things they wanted, things that would be dealbreakers. Alicia handed over her list, she’d written things like “en-suite bathroom, guest bedroom, office space, windows in the kitchen, backyard for Jack,” the realtor had smiled and nodded, these were standard requests, easily accomplished with the kind of budget they had. Bob’s list had included precisely three letters, “ODR” 

Bad Bob Zimmermann had grown up on the ice, the only thing he wanted was a pond for him and his son to be able to skate on. And it had taken ages, but they’d found a house with a long driveway, just close enough to the suburbs and a good elementary school for Jack to keep Alicia happy. But Bob got his pond, the house that backed onto the woods. The pond, Bob assumes, is manmade, but it’s been there long enough that it’s weathered and looks like it’s been there forever. 

Jack hadn’t learned to skate there, he’d learned to skate on a backyard DIY rink that Bob had set up when he was two. But Jack’s learned how to do backwards crossovers here, he’s spent hours running backcheck drills. He’d brought Kent here too, the weekends they’d had off. 

The pond always freezes solid from December until at least the end of February. It’s been safe to skate on for months, but it’s the first time Jack will step foot on the ice since last winter. He sits on the little wooden bench that Jack and Alicia had put together so many years ago. He tugs his skates on, ties his laces, wraps them once around his ankle for extra support. 

Maybe he was hoping for it to feel foreign. If he’s not a hockey player any more, then why do the skates fit better than any pair of shoes ever have?

He runs his hands along the carbon fibre of the boot. He doesn’t think about what he’s doing , just steps on to the ice. He hears the dull, thunking crack, it’s a familiar sound as the ice settles. He’s worried, for a moment, that he might forget, but Jack Zimmermann knew how to skate before he knew how to walk without tripping over his own feet and it comes back to him easier than breathing. He feels the skates cut into the ice as he glides, pushing off with his foot, tentatively at first, then stronger. He gives himself a harder push, lengthens his stride. He skates from one side of the pond to the other. His breath comes out ragged, not because he’s out of shape, he’s kept up with running, but it’s cold, and it takes a second for his lungs to get used to this kind of movement, this kind of breathing. He looks around, the sky is turning grey as the sun sets, he hasn’t heard Alicia’s car yet, her work dinners usually turn into work drinks, he’s safe. Bob will eat dinner in his office if he eats dinner at all and then he’ll fall asleep watching the west coast game in the basement, Jack would be surprised to see him at all. 

He stops, kicking up a spray of snow and he smiles to himself. He glances over at the shed, there are sticks in there, pucks, an old net, probably some targets too. But he can’t, he won’t. Jack can skate, but that won’t make him a hockey player again, he isn’t a hockey player if he doesn’t pick up a hockey stick. So he weaves around the sticks on the pond, aimlessly gliding, avoiding the rough patches. There’s a serious look on his face as he moves, but not a serious thought in his head. His head is blank because for the first time in years he’s not thinking about how he’s going to apply all of this to a game, how his crossovers aren’t good enough or his edges aren’t crisp… whatever the fuck that means. He loves it, a revelation that makes him frown, because he still feels, deep down, that he can’t have this. That playing hockey again might break him, which in turn, would break his parents for good. But this is just skating, and skating isn’t hockey, maybe he can put his skates on and show those kids how to stop without crashing into the boards, maybe he can show Gen how to skate blue line to blue line without wobbling. Yeah, maybe he can do that, he grins. 

He turns on his edges, and he forgot how fun that feels. The balance of it all, the swooping feeling in his chest. So he does it again. And he falls. His skates go out from underneath of him and he slips. His shoulder bears the brunt of it but the wind’s knocked out of him. 

He’s never fallen like that, not alone, not when someone else wasn’t pushing him. He runs his finger along his skate blade, and sure enough, they’re dull. Of course they’re dull, it’s been months. He frowns. He’s sitting in a snowbank, he realizes. He puts his hands on his head, breathing heavy. He missed the ice, solid underneath of him, more than he’ll ever admit. 

An important fact about Jack Zimmermann, he doesn’t think about the things he does until after he’s done them, sometimes not for months, years, sometimes never at all. So it’s anybody’s guess why he takes his skates off right there on the ice and reaches for his boots. It’s a mystery to him as much as anybody else why he ties his skate laces together and picks them up and starts walking. He doesn’t even walk through the house, just up the hill in his backyard away from the pond, through the back gate and down the driveway. Snow crunches under his feet as he walks, the street lights have come on and everything is enveloped in a yellow, snowy haze.

_ “We don’t get our equipment anywhere else, right Jack?”  _ Bad Bob’s voice rings in his head as he pushes open the back door of Halloran’s Skate Shop. He remembers Bob ruffling his hair as he let him pick out a new stick, remembers how Mr. Halloran greeted Bob like they were old friends probably because they were. He remembers the two little girls, sisters, who chased each other around the back, remembers always being invited to join their games but never accepting. He remembers that Bob insisted they stick around while they waited for their skates to get sharpened, how he would sit down for a cup of coffee and Jack would test out all the sticks he could get his hands on, messing around with the flex and the length. 

“We’re just about to close, it’s nearly eight,” a girl’s voice calls from behind the register. Jack wanders out of the shadow, hand in his pocket, he’s holding on to the laces, skates hanging at his side. 

The girl has chin length brown hair and she’s wearing a black windbreaker with a team logo on the shoulder. 

“Well. JLZ, can’t say I was expecting to see you tonight, or ever again actually,” The girl says. 

She’s leaning on something, Jack can’t see what it is from behind the register. 

“Darcy,” Jack says. 

Mr. Halloran’s oldest daughter, she’s six months older than Jack. 

“Wow, you remembered,” she smirks, “I guess fame didn’t change you.”

It hits Jack in the chest, not so much the reminder of his (albeit brief and niche) fame, but the fact that Darcy Halloran is the first person who hasn’t skirted around it, directly tried to avoid it. 

“How could I forget?” Jack says, “Good with names,” he shrugs, “If you're closing, I can leave,” he says. 

“What do you need, JL?” She asks. It’s a nickname that only she ever used for him, it sounds nicer in french than when Kenny tried to use it. 

“My uh… my skates are dull. I didn’t know anywhere else to go.”

“Say no more,” Darcy holds up her hand, Jack hands over his skates, she’s still behind the register and he’s in front. 

“Oh boy they’re dull as hell, when’s the last time you skated,” she says, running her hand over the blade. 

“Like 20 minutes ago,” Jack answers, “But before that, the mem cup.”

“You’ve changed,” she says. 

“Can you really blame me?”

“Not for all of it,” she shrugs. 

“Lock the front door for me, will you? I don’t need any more customers,” she throws him a key ring and he does what he’s told, no reason not to. 

He gives the door a push to make sure it’s locked, and when it is, he returns to the register. She’s come around to the front, there’s a metal crutch next to her, she’s leaning on it, keeping the weight off of her right knee, which is in a brace. 

“How long have you been home?” she asks. 

“Couple months,” Jack answers easily. 

“You playing?” She asks. 

He shakes his head, “Just skating. I don’t think I should play anymore.”

“Right,” she says, he can’t tell if she sounds disappointed or if that’s just the natural lilt of her voice. 

“What about you, weren’t you supposed to be playing this year. I read about you committing to Merrimack.”

She looks down at her knee, then back up at Jack, “Does it look like that worked out?”

“Christ, I’m sorry,” Jack apologizes quickly. 

Darcy just laughs, “God, your face. You should’ve seen it.”

Jack rubs the back of his neck, smiles awkwardly. 

“Come hang out in the back, I’ll sharpen these bad boys,” she picks up the skates. 

He wonders briefly if he should offer an arm but she manages fine with the crutch, holding the skates with one hand and the crutch with the other. He follows her into the area that says employees only. He’s never paid attention to that sign since Bob used to spend hours with Mr. Halloran back here, Jack used to watch him sharpen skates when he was particularly bored, or particularly anxious to be around Darcy and her little sister. 

“You look like you’re itching to ask what happened,” Darcy says, she kicks out a chair for Jack to sit in. He sits while she finds a pair of safety goggles. 

“That’s rude,” Jack says. 

“I don’t feel like that,” Darcy says, “Like, I’d rather you just get it out of the way and ask instead of sitting there wondering and feeling sorry for me.”

“Huh,” Jack says, “Yeah. I get that,” he mumbles, “So what happened.”

“I played four games. Season started in October and I was out by Halloween,” she pulls her hair up into a bun on top of her head, Jack notices that she has an undercut, it suits her, he thinks. 

“We were playing Penn State and everything was going great, I even scored a goal, chipped in an assist, and then in the second this girl gets tripped while I’m skating over the blue line with the puck. I guess she got thrown off course because next thing I know I’m on my ass and everything hurts. It was knee on knee, apparently, they had to help me off the ice. Needed surgery, I’d be out the whole season. So I just decided to come home, dad put me to work, wouldn’t want me getting la” she says

“I’m sorry that happened to you,” Jack says, polite. 

She rolls her eyes but doesn’t say anything more. 

They don’t talk while she sharpens his left skate. He watches the sparks fly, her hands steady. Her eyes are focused looking down, Jack can tell she’s doing a good job. 

She blows some dust off the blade and hands it to Jack. 

“That up to your standards.”

It’s sharp to the touch, he nods. 

“Where’s your dad?” Jack asks, never good at making small talk. 

“Home with Claire.”

Right. Jack feels like an asshole for not remembering. Claire got sick when Jack and Darcy were seven or eight. Jack doesn’t know the details of the illness but he knows it left her weak, in a wheelchair, knows Mr. Halloran didn’t like to talk about it. 

“Sorry,” Jack says. 

“What are you sorry for?” Darcy raises an eyebrow. 

“That I brought it up, I guess.”

“Don’t,” she says, “It’s not a big deal. It’s just Claire.”

Maybe Jack doesn’t know what it’s like because he was an only child, because he never had a sister, let alone one who got sick when he was young. 

“Do people spend a lot of time telling you they feel sorry for you, JL?” Darcy’s leaning against the workbench. 

Jack shrugs, “Guess so.”

“And how much do you hate it?”

“A lot,” Jack admits, “It’s not their fault.”

“Me getting hurt isn’t your fault and Claire definitely isn’t your fault.”

“I just don’t know what to say,” Jack says. 

“A failing of language. I guess we have to come up with better words one day. Something better than  _ damn that sucks _ .”

“Maybe we should just say  _ damn that sucks, _ ” Jack says. 

“Oh yeah, rock up to grandma’s funeral, no more  _ sorry for your loss,  _ just a whole bunch of  _ damn that sucks _ .”

“I would have preferred it,” Jack says. 

“At your grandma’s funeral?”

“No,” Jack says, “In the hospital.”

“Well, in that case,” Darcy says, “May I be the first to say, damn that sucks.”

Jack lets out a dry laugh. Darcy smiles because she pulled it from him. 

“Alright, well, you can’t skate on one sharp skate, so…” Darcy holds up his other skate and gets to work. 

Jack watches once again, her capable hands, fingernails that she keeps short, there’s grease from something on her wrist, he notices when she rolls up her sleeve to keep it out of the way. 

When she finally hands over the skates, she says. 

“I could bake them for you, mold ‘em to your feet again since you haven’t skated in a while, they’re new enough they can handle the heat,” she offers. 

Jack accepts, and honestly half the reason is because he doesn’t want to leave Darcy’s company. She’s the first person who’s treated him like a person. Like a normal 18 year old boy who won’t break if she mentions the world or the overdose or how unfair everything is. 

So she puts the skates in the oven in the work room. It takes five minutes for them to get warm enough, and while they wait, she flips on an electric kettle in the corner of the room. 

“Am I keeping you?” Jack asks, suddenly worried that Darcy’s just being nice and she secretly wants to go home. 

“No,” Darcy says, “Not from anything important. This is all I do, pretty much,” it’s a sad sort of laugh. 

“Damn, that sucks,” Jack says. 

“Asshole,” Darcy mutters with a smile on her face. 

She pulls the skates from the oven and gets him to take off his shoes. 

She crouches on the ground in front of him, helps him push his feet into the skates. It feels like putting on a pair of socks after they’ve come out of the dryer. Jack can tie his own skates, but he lets Darcy do it, he figures she knows what she’s doing more than he does. He realizes that no one except for his mother has really laid a hand on him since he got home. And who would, anyway? He doesn’t have friends, Bob thinks he’ll break if he looks at him too hard. It’s weird, intimate in a strange sort of way as she ties them tight around his feet and tells him to stay still. 

“Now we wait,” she says. 

She stands up, the kettle’s boiled by now. There are two mugs, one says  _ Merrimack Hockey Dad  _ and the other is light blue with a chip in the handle. Darcy rips open two packets of hot chocolate powder and pours the water on top. She stirs it with a metal spoon that she throws into the sink when she’s done and hands the  _ Merrimack Hockey Dad  _ mug to Jack. 

“Thought it’d be funny,” she shrugs. 

“It is,” Jack says, he blows on the scalding hot chocolate. 

“Sorry I don’t have milk. There might be some in the staff room but I doubt it’s not expired.”

“This is fine. This is really nice,” Jack says, “You don’t have to be this nice.”

“I have no reason not to be nice,” Darcy scratches the back of her head where the hair is shorter. 

Jack has grown used to people being nice to him for a very specific reason. Because they knew his dad was famous, or they knew he was about to be famous. Darcy doesn’t seem to care about either of those things. 

“So,” she says, “What are you doing skating if you're not playing hockey.”

“It’s complicated,” Jack says. 

“Ah,” she rolls her eyes, “I wouldn’t get it,” she says. 

And Jack doesn’t want to offend her, he tries to backtrack, “No, it’s just… I’m not really sure what I’m doing, I don’t know how to explain it to you. Or if you’d care to listen to me try”

“Our dads used to spend hours back here talking, we can spend 20 minutes while your skates mold.”

And Jack’s mostly trapped, if he takes his feet out of the skates now it’ll ruin the fit. So he sits on the edge of the chair and sighs. 

“I’m coaching,” he says. 

“How’s that going?” she takes a sip of her own hot chocolate, makes a face, but takes another sip. 

“Poorly,” he says, “The kids suck.”

“I’m sure you love losing.”

“My therapist made me do it,” he whispers the word therapist like it’s something to be ashamed of, Darcy doesn’t say anything so he keeps talking, “Like it would be good for me to engage with hockey without the high stakes, I guess. Something like that.”

“Hmm,” Darcy says, “That makes sense.”

“Yeah well,” he says, “I hate it. Hell is a co-ed peewee hockey game at 1 p.m.”

“We played co-ed peewee hockey games at 1 p.m.” Darcy points out. 

“They were hell for me back then too,” Jack says. 

“Yeah that’s because you were so much better than everyone else,” Darcy points out. 

“You're too kind,” Jack deadpans. 

“For me, those games were the last time I felt like I was just playing hockey, not girls hockey.”

“Oh?” Jack says. 

“I dunno. You guys had your minor hockey, got to go to the Q, people paid a lot of attention to you guys. They told you if you tried hard enough you’d make the NHL. People kept telling me to shoot for college. After that, who knows.”

“You were good,” Jack says, uselessly. 

“Yeah,” she says, “Still am. Not that it’d earn me anything worth writing home about.”

“I never thought about that.”

“We were never great friends,” she shrugs, “Sorry if I was a pain in the ass when we were kids,” she says, “I was loud, I’m sure that wasn’t great for you.”

“You weren’t, it’s not like that,” Jack assures her quickly, “I was just always a mess.”

“A tad dramatic, don’t we think?” she asks. 

Jack just rolls his eyes, a small smile on his face. 

“You know, those kids probably don’t think you’re a mess,” Darcy says, “To them you’re just a hockey coach.”

Jack shrugs. 

“They don’t care that you’re Jack Zimmermann,” she points out. 

He nods.

“Can I show you something?” She asks. 

“Sure,” Jack says. 

Darcy gets up, pulls a picture frame off the wall and hands it to Jack. 

He sees her, first, at eight years old, lying down in front of their championship winning peewee team. Jack sees himself next, in the back row, chubby face grinning wide. 

“You can’t tell me you didn’t have fun at that tournament.”

And Jack thinks back, spending the weekend in a hotel with his team, they thought it was the coolest thing in the world to be able to run up and down the hallways, racing each other on the elevators. And he realizes that he did have fun that weekend. When did this stop being fun?

“I did,” he admits. 

“What’s stopping those kids from having fun?”

“Our goalie’s wearing hand me down gear, for one thing.”

“Are you telling me the richest kid in Montreal doesn’t know how to ask his parents for money?”

“Screw you,” Jack punches her lightly in the shoulder. 

She punches back, a little harder. 

“Those should be good by now,” she jerks her head down at his skates. 

Before he can reach to untie them, she’s crouching in front of him to help him pull them off. 

“Thanks,” he mumbles. 

“Don’t mention it,” she says, “We’re bros now.”

Jack snorts, “yeah, alright,” he says. 

“Hey, c’mon,” she says, “I’d put money on the fact that you haven’t talked to anyone other than your parents in a month.”

“The kids,” Jack says. 

“Alright wise guy.”

Jack laughs, and she laughs, and she puts his skates in a cardboard box so he can carry them home.

“I’m glad you needed your skates sharpened,” she says once they stop smiling, “It’s good to see you again.”

“How much do I owe you?” He asks.

“I’ll just send you the bill, I doubt you grabbed your wallet when you decided to show up here five minutes before we closed.”

Jack turns red, because she’s entirely correct. 

“I’m gonna come to your next game,” Darcy says, there’s no asking involved, “which team are you?”

“Team 6,” Jack answers. 

“Seriously?” 

“What?”

“You didn’t even name them?”

“I kind of assumed if they wanted a name they would have had one when I got there.”

“Maybe you are hopeless,” she teases

Jack shrugs. 

“You want a ride home?” she asks. 

“It’s not that far,” Jack says. 

“Yeah but it’s dark,” 

“What’s that matter.”

“Spoken like a buff man,” Darcy rolls her eyes, “C’mon, I just have to lock up,’ she insists.”

“Okay,” he says, “Can you drive with that?” he points at her knee. 

“I have been,” she shrugs. 

He watches Darcy walk to the back of the stoor and pull the backdoor closed. She turns out the lights and double checks that all the machinery is turned off. Then she turns to Jack.

“Let’s get going, eh?”

“Sure,” Jack says.

The only car in the parking lot is a white SUV. Darcy twirls her keyring around her finger and then presses the button to unlock it, the headlights flash and she opens the driver’s side door. Jack stands beside the passenger door. 

“You waiting for me to open it for you?” she asks. 

Jack shakes his head, “I can walk,” he says. Jack doesn’t ask for help and this feels like asking for help. 

Darcy slides into the driver’s seat, he watches her reach over and toss open the passenger door. 

“Get in,” She says with half an eyeroll. 

So Jack gets in, he tucks his shoulders in on himself, hunching, trying to make himself as small as possible in the passenger seat as he buckles his seatbelt. 

Darcy rifles through a CD holder before finding one she seems to like, a burned CD. She slides it into the CD player. She keeps the volume quiet but Jack can hear the music, it’s rough and the singer sounds kind of whiny if Jack’s being honest, but it does feel very  _ Darcy.  _ It has her energy, if that makes sense. 

“So do your parents know you’re here?” Darcy asks. 

Jack shakes his head. 

“I’m not gonna get in shit from Dad Bob, am I?”

“I doubt he even noticed I left,” Jack mumbles. 

“What about Supermom?”

Jack smiles at his parents’ nicknames in spite of himself.

“She had a thing. Won’t be home yet.”

“Cool,” Darcy says, “As long as you’re not getting in trouble.”

Trouble. Jack thinks he’d have to do something pretty stupid to let his parents down any mroe than he already has. 

“I think I’ve been in enough trouble, Darce.”

“Hm,” she says, as she backs out of her parking spot, “No one’s called me Darce in a long time.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

“No,” she says, “The girls at school called me Hally. Like Halloran,” she says, “I always liked Darce better.”

“Oh, cool,” Jack says. 

Darcy turns the music up a couple notches. It only takes two songs to get to the top of the Zimmermann driveway. Darcy looks over at him. 

“I’m serious about coming to your game by the way,” she says. 

“Yeah. That’s fine,” Jack doesn’t know what else to say. 

She reaches into the back of the car and hands Jack the box with his skates in it. 

“Let me know if there’s anything wrong with the blades, I’ll fix ‘em for free. I’m not quite as good at sharpening skates as my dad.”

“I’m sure they’ll be fine for what I need them to do. Thank you,” Jack says, always polite. 

“Those kids’ll be happy to have you on the ice,” Darcy says. 

“I hope I can teach them something,” Jack says. 

“JLZ, Rimouski Oceanic’s leading scorer for two years,” she reminds him. 

"Yeah well, not a lot of good it does me now. I don't play anymore."

"You were also the leading scorer when we played together. You loved it. I remember the zamboni driver used to have to chase us off the ice because you'd always ask if I wanted to play more after practice."

"I just wanted to be on the ice."

"You belonged there. You loved it. I bet those kids will too. They deserve to have as much fun as we did back then."

She pats him on the shoulder.

Jack opens the door and steps out into the driveway, he starts to close the door and then stops himself. 

“Can I have your number?”

“Oh,” Darcy says, almost surprised, like she’s just remembered that people have phone numbers, “Yeah,” she says. Then she hands him her cell phone. 

“Put your number in and I’ll text you.”

So Jack types his number into her contacts, looks at the spot where he’s supposed to type his name, instead of  _ Jack,  _ he puts  _ JL.  _

“See you around,” she says. 

Jack closes the passenger door and heads for the front porch.

His phone vibrates in his pocket before he opens the front door. 

_[unknown number]_ _it’s ur new best friend :)_

He watches Darcy back out of the driveway and saves her number as  _ Darce.  _

He thinks he might like having a new best friend. 

He feels guilty immediately after that thought. Kenny’s face flashes in his mind, he shakes his head. Kenny probably has a new best friend by now, he deserves one at least. Jack wonders if he does too. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Listen, I needed someone to be Hans in this, and Jack needed a friend and I love writing women's hockey players, so,,, Darcy. I love her a lot


	5. You wanna lose? Fine, you're the ones who look like idiots out there

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Team 6 has to practice, but first, Jack needs to find a way to get them new gear

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw for talking about Jack's anxiety and a small panic attack

“These kids are playing with hand me down gear, Mom,” Jack says, they’re sitting at the breakfast table. His mother looks up at him from her cell phone. 

“I’m sure they can do just fine,” she says calmly. 

“It’s not fair,” Jack says. He’s wearing a pair of grey sweatpants and a thick navy blue hoodie, hood pulled up to cover his shaggy bedhead.

“Not fair how? You can teach them to be just as good as the kids with new gear.”

“I’m sure I can, but they don’t have a fair shot against all these rich kids!”

“Why do you care so much all of a sudden?” His mom raises an eyebrow, she knows how he’s viewed his “punishment,” with disinterest. 

“I dunno,” he says, “I guess I was just thinking… I always had what I needed when I was a kid, it made it so I  _ could  _ be the best.”

“So you’re asking for money?” Alicia asks. 

Jack nods. 

“Do I even want to know how much?” Alicia sets her phone down and gives him a sideways smirk. 

“15 thousand dollars,” Jack swallows hard, “For ice time and gear.”

Alicia looks up, “Jack honey…”

Jack looks at her, his eyes meet hers, the same blue. She can see the fire in them. It’s the first time he’s cared about  _ anything  _ in months. He hopes she sees it. 

“We can help,” Alicia says after a pause that makes Jack want to crawl out of his own skin. 

“Really?”

“On a few conditions,” she says. 

Jack nods, “Yes, yes, absolutely,” Jack says, willing to do whatever it takes. 

“You promise me you’re committed to this team and these kids?” She asks. 

“Yes,” Jack says. He thinks about the first game, how he never wants them to have to lose like that again, to be that embarrassed. 

Alicia nods, “Okay, and you promise you’ll keep up with counselling.”

Jack nods. 

“Last condition,” Alicia says, holding up her hand. 

“Anything,” Jack says. 

“You have dinner with your father tonight,” she says. 

Jack’s face drops. He sinks back into his hoodie, stomach clenches. 

“I don’t know what we’d talk about,” Jack mumbles. 

“You’ll find something if you want my credit card,” Alicia says. 

Jack steels himself. For those kids. For fairness. To win. 

“Fine,” he says, “Okay, I’ll do it.”

“Good, I’ll let him know.”

She sends a quick text to Bob. Jack hears his father’s phone chime from the basement. 

Alicia hands her credit card to Jack. 

“Always remember how lucky you are, Jack,” Alicia reminds him as he slips it into his pocket. 

“I know,” Jack says. 

He stands up and he hugs his mom. Fully enveloping her in his arms and squeezing, she makes a surprised little squeak. Jack’s let his mom hug him plenty of times since he’s gotten home but he hasn’t been the one to initiate it yet. He sees the way his mom smiles at him as he runs to the stairs. He can’t let her down again. He can’t let her know that the anxiety still bubbles in his stomach, that he still feels empty. He has to let her think this is working.

“Darce!” he says into the phone, she answers right away. 

She sounds tired, groans as she says, “sup, JL?”

“My mom gave me her credit card,”

“What? Oh! Hell yeah.”

“I uh... Can I ask a favour?”

“Sure, I’m not busy.”

Jack bites his bottom lip, “I already told the kids to get dropped off at the mall instead of the park for practice but uh… I’m not really allowed to drive, do you think you can pick me up? Like would you want to come, and maybe be my assistant coach?” He just blurts it out before he can second guess himself.

“Woah JL,” she says, “First, slow down you’re talking a mile a minute.”

“Sorry,” he says, “Nervous.”

“Don’t need to be,” she says, “I’ll get dressed and be right over.”

Jack realizes that he should probably put on something other than a pair of sweatpants. 

“I’ll see you soon,” Jack says. 

He grins as he hangs up. It’s like having something to do and someone to do it with has changed his entire world. He puts on his jeans and a black t-shirt underneath a red flannel. He’s determined to have a good day. 

Darcy honks from the driveway, head hanging out the window. 

“Who’s that, love?” Alicia asks, she’s sitting at the dining room table, laptop open. 

“Darcy Halloran,” Jack says, “I don’t know if you remember but we played peewee together,” Jack says. 

“I remember her family,” Alicia says, cautious smile. 

“She’s going to coach with me,” Jack says, “We’re going to the mall.”

“Okay honey, remember dinner I made reservations for 8 p.m.”

“Okay,” Jack says and promptly pushes that thought out of his mind, sets a mental timer to think about it again at about 7:30. 

Darcy’s leaning against the side of her SUV. She’s wearing a hoodie underneath of a black vest, over top of a pair of black athletic leggings. There’s an iced coffee in her hand and a pair of sunglasses over her face. 

“Do you do caffeine?” She asks instead of greeting him. 

“Uhhh,” he stutters. 

“Because I have an extra coffee if you want it, is what I’m getting at,” she says. 

“Oh,” Jack says, “Yeah. Caffeine’s fine.” He chews his bottom lip and gets into the passenger side. She hands him her second iced coffee, “So did you ask because I had a nervous breakdown. About the coffee I mean,” He holds it in between his thighs as he does up his seatbelt. 

It’s a fact of his life that people treat him differently because they know about the overdose. 

“Yeah,” Darcy says, “But also you’re an athlete or you might have a heart condition or you might get migraines. I was just asking, I swear,” she says, “It’s not a big deal.”

“Oh,” Jack says, “yeah,” he takes a sip through the bright red straw, “So uh, iced coffee in January?”

She shrugs, “I like it.”

“It’s good. Don’t your hands get cold?”

“No pain no gain,” she backs out of the driveway. 

She tells Jack to pick the radio station and with no discernible taste of his own, he settles on the top 40 and leans back. She doesn’t question the choice, just hums along, one hand on the steering wheel, the other holding her coffee. 

“So how many kids do you have and are they any good?”

“Seven, give or take,” Jack says, “There are supposed to be about a dozen but there are some that never show up. Gonna try and find more kids to take their spots.” He takes a long sip of the coffee, “And uh. Not good,” he answers the second part of the question. 

“Well, let’s try and make them not terrible,”

She holds out her coffee, Jack knocks his against it and smiles. 

The mall downtown has everything they could possibly need to outfit seven kids with new hockey equipment. They find Mickey, Shelby, Robbie and Alex waiting on a bench outside of the entrance. 

“Where are your parents?” Jack asks. 

“Mickey’s mom dropped us off, they all had to work,” Robbie says. 

“We’re not babies, we can hang out at a mall,” Shelby says.

“Yeah we only shoplift a little,” Alex says, cut off by Mickey elbowing him in the ribs. 

Gen and Pierre jump out of a mini-van, Gen’s step-mom waves at them and then at Jack. 

“Who’s this,” Gen asks, instantly, looking up at Darcy. 

Jack looks at the kids, then at Darcy, “This is your new assistant coach, a friend of mine,” Jack says. 

Darcy has a smirk on her face and her arms crossed over her chest, “I’m Darcy,” simple. 

Mickey speaks, “No offence Coach Zed,” Jack cringes at the nickname, “But what are we doing at the mall when we could be on the pond?”

“Shopping,” Darcy cracks a joke.

“For?” Shelby prompts with all the sass she can conjure. 

“Well, new goalie pads for you, for starters,” Jack says. 

Shelby’s jaw drops, “I have my brother’s stuff,” she says. 

“Well, we have a sponsor now,” Jack says, it’s easier than saying ‘my mommy gave me her credit card,’ he continues, “and I don’t think they’d want us skating around in ill fitting hand-me-down equipment. Get whatever you think you’ll need.”

Jack points at the entrance to the sporting goods store, “Knock yourselves out,” he says. 

Alex is the first one to push the door open and run inside, Mickey looks reluctant but he follows his gang of friends into the store. 

“Y’know you’re pretty good with the kids,” Darcy says. 

“Not bad for a cokehead,” Jack cocks his eyebrow. 

“Was that a joke from the Jack Zimmermann,” she elbows him. 

“I’m in a good mood,” he shrugs. 

“It only took six months,” she needles him. He doesn’t think he’d smile if it was someone else, someone less well meaning. 

They walk into the store and the kids are already wreaking havoc, running around, trying on equipment. Shelby’s already talking to a salesperson near the goalie equipment. 

“Zimmermann!” the man behind the register says. 

Darcy ducks her head so he can’t see her rolling her eyes. 

Jack gives a polite nod.

“Anything the kids want, on this card,” he hands over his mother’s credit card and the cashier nods. 

“I wasn’t sure the rumours were true, what are you doing cochin peewee?”

Jack’s words get stuck in his throat. 

“He has a secret lovechild on the team,” Darcy says and pulls him over to where the kids are. 

Pierre is standing next to a rack of sticks, seemingly reluctant to touch one. 

“You can get a new stick Oulet,” Jack says. 

“Oh,” Pierre shakes his head, “They’re so expensive, I wouldn’t want to…”

“Don’t worry about that,” Jack cuts him off. 

“Let me find one that’s gonna work for you,” Darcy jumps in. 

She grabs a stick, holds it up to Pierre’s chin. Jack wanders away as she starts testing different kinds of flex with him. 

He picks up a box of pucks and tucks it under his arm. He looks around. Alex is chasing Mickey through the display of jerseys, they’re laughing. Mickey tries to look disproving but Alex seems to have his number when it comes to getting him out of his shell. Shelby’s listening to a sales associate explain the benefits of having actual goalie skates to her. Jack walks over to Gen, she’s standing in front of a shelf with rolls of stick tape. Mostly black and white, but there are the classic patterned ones too. He remembers Kent buying him skull tape for his birthday as a joke. That was ages ago. Gen’s looking at the coloured tape though, eyes skimming over the neon green and the camo tape and landing squarely on a roll of pink tape. 

“Need more tape?” Jack asks, “I was just going to buy a bunch of black and white,” he says. 

“Oh yeah,” she says, “That would be good. I was just looking at uh… I like the pink,” her voice drops to a mumble. 

“Oh,” Jack says, “It’s nice,” he means it. He never wanted to play with coloured tape but kids are kids and part of being a kid in hockey is having some weird equipment.

“It’s not too girly?” she asks. 

“Uh…” Jack trails. 

“I knew it,” she scowls, “It is right?”

“No!” Jack tries to recover, “It’s not, I mean there’s nothing wrong with being girly if that’s how you want to be and if it’s not that’s cool too I mean just because you play with mostly boys… it’s not like you’re not as good. Not that a girl wouldn’t be just as good as a boy,” he’s panicking, completely lost on what to say next, “I mean…”

Darcy pops up behind him just in time, Jack turns around to see Pierre grinning and holding a new stick. 

“Pink looks good,” she says, she steps slightly in front of Jack, “But coloured tape sucks to play with, it’s worse quality.”

“Oh,” Gen looks up at Darcy. 

She moves around the display and comes back with a box of skate laces, they’re bright pink, she hands them to Gen. 

“What do you think about those?” Darcy asks. 

“I like them,” Gen says, almost bashful. 

“Well then they’re yours,” Jack chimes in. 

“But if I wear pink laces then everyone’s gonna know I’m a girl, like, right away,” Gen says. 

“What’s wrong with that?” Jack asks, he’s really trying to be helpful. 

Darcy rolls her eyes.

She puts her hand on Gen’s shoulder and says, “Kiddo, there’s always going to be some dumb boy who thinks you shouldn’t play hockey because you’re a girl, no matter how much you try to hide it or fit in, they’ll still come for you. So if you like the laces, wear the laces. You play better when you think you look cool”

Jack smiles, remembering Darcy’s affinity for elaborate dutch braids when they were kids. 

“Really?” Gen asks. 

“Oh yeah,” Darcy assures her, “Everyone’s got different things that they think make them look cool. I played with a girl this fall who wore red lipstick for all of our games, a bunch of us wore chains under our jerseys or we taped our pads a certain way. If pink tape is your thing then you should let it be your thing.”

“Thanks,” Gen mumbles, she’s holding the laces in her hand, a soft smile on her face. 

“If Pierre can wear yellow laces then you can wear pink ones,” Jack says. 

He’s not nearly as loose and personable as Darcy is, standing up straight, hands shoved in his pockets, but he thinks he’s trying. And he thinks he does a good job picking assistant coaches. 

Darcy claps him on the back, startling him slightly as Gen joins Alex and Mickey looking at mouth guards. 

“Could you be any more awkward?” she teases. 

“Yeah,” Jack says. 

Darcy snorts. They join the group next to a display advertising compression gear. Jack’s eyes wander throughout the store, he sees a standing a few feet away from him, he’s tall but lanky, has to be at leas 5’10”. He reaches up to examine t-shirt, hands reaching the top shelf easily. 

“You know that kid?” Jack asks Mickey. 

Mickey shrugs, “That’s Ryland Scott, his family just moved here from like, Florida or something.”

“You ever see him play hockey?” Jack asks, looking to fill out his (frankly) below average-height roster.

“I heard he’s a swimmer and he’s gonna be in the next Olympics and that’s why he can’t play hockey,” Alex pipes up. 

“I heard his family moved here because he got into a fight and almost killed a guy,” Shelby says way too loudly, Pierre elbows her in the side. 

“Hmm,” Jack says. 

He pays for the equipment with his mother’s card and promises himself he’ll cook her the best mother’s day breakfast anyone’s ever had this year. 

They walk with the kids to the rink, ice time also paid for with Alicia Zimmermann’s card. They make it just before dark.

Jack takes them into the locker room where he knows there will be a box of jerseys waiting. He pulls one out and holds it in front of his chest. An angry looking Canada Goose is on the front. 

“Darcy said we needed a name,” Jack says. 

“And you went with Goose?” Alex blurts out.

“Well  _ Geese, _ ” Jack shrugs. 

“You want us to play hockey with those on our backs?” Shelby smirks, “Geese are lame.”

“Hey!” Darcy chides, “You ever been chased by a goose? Fuckin’ scary, now listen to your coach,” she points at Jack. 

The kids giggle at the swear but listen nonetheless. 

“We needed a name,” Jack holds up the orange jerseys and passes one to Mickey. 

“Well,” Mickey says, “I like ‘em.”

“Thanks, kid,” Jack mumbles. 

He passes out the jerseys and the kids reluctantly accept the name “geese” and debate about who got the cooler numbers. 

“Alright,” Jack says when they’ve all finally calmed down and put on their equipment, “Let’s skate.”

He lets the kids out onto the ice for a few minutes while he ties his skates on the bench. Darcy swings her legs over the board and perches over, legs dangling. The leg with the brace on it is stiffer than the other. He watches them crash into each other, giggling the whole time. Shelby’s getting used to her new skates, she falls a couple times before Jack and gets out onto the ice. Jack blows his whistle. The kids turn to face him. 

Darcy jumps down onto the ice and drops pylons along the ice as he talks. 

“We’re going to start from the beginning,” Jack says, “Skating because it’s pretty clear that some of you were never taught the basics. I’m going to show you how to use your edges, how to stop and how to move backwards. And then your parents are going to pick you up.”

Mickey’s standing in front of the kids. Alex is right next to him. 

“Coach Zed, er, sorry, just Coach, usually when we practice we just scrimmage.”

“Well,” Jack says, “You think playing hockey is fun right?” he asks. 

The kids nod. 

“Sometimes to have fun you have to work. The drill is simple. Hold your stick in front of you like this, and weave around the pylons, turn at the pylon, use the edge of your skate, it gives you more speed and control over your turn. We’ll add a puck if you can do that.”

Jack demonstrates. The kids go next. Jack watches. Mickey's the kid with the best grasp on skating, he’s the only one who doesn’t fall trying to stop at the end. Shelby’s still getting used to moving in her gear, Jack knows they’ll have to work with her separately eventually but for now he’s satisfied teaching her to glide side to side. 

“When do we get to shoot,” Gen complains. 

“Yeah!” Robbie agrees, “We’ve been at it for twenty minutes and we still haven’t got the nets out.”

“When do I get in net?” Shelby joins in the chorus of protests. 

Mickey turns and faces his team, “Come on guys, Coach Zed is just trying to help us.”

“Just coach is fine, Mickey,” Jack says. 

“Sorry,” Mickey mumbles. 

“Alright, everybody get on the blue line,” Jack says. 

There’s a groan, the kids know the drill. Blue line to red line and back, blue line to blue line and back, blue line to the end of the rink. He could do it full size and start them at the red line behind them, but he figures that the kids can catch a break today. 

Jack blows his whistle to tell them to start. Their strides are sloppy, he glides around, yelling at them to bend their knees and keep their heads up. He’s satisfied after five repetitions. The kids fall in a heap at centre ice trying to catch their breath. 

“You’re conditioning is going to have to be better than that if you want to play a full sixty minutes,” Jack says. 

Mickey looks up at him incredulously but doesn’t say anything. 

“You’re parents are going to be here soon,” Darcy says, “Go get changed, make sure you put all your gear in your bags and remember it for next practice.”

Jack and Darcy stay on the ice while the kids head into the locker room. Jack is taller than Darcy normally but he’s wearing skates and she’s wearing Doc Martens so he has a solid eight inches on her now. 

“You’re really talking to kids about conditioning?” Darcy asks when Shelby finally shuffles down the narrow hallway. 

“What?” Jack asks, “It’s the truth,” he shrugs. 

“Hey,” Darcy says, “You’re the coach, it just didn’t seem like anyone was having a whole lot of fun.”

“They can have fun when they win,” Jack says, earnestly, it’s the truth. Winning is the fun part, right?

Darcy shrugs, “Do you wanna stay a while, maybe play a little one on one?” Darcy asks, “I brought my skates, as long as I don’t go crazy my knee should be fine.”

Jack grimaces and shakes his head, “I have to get dinner with my dad tonight, only way mom would let me use her credit card,” Jack doesn’t think he would have stayed anyway, but he doesn’t have to tell Darcy that. 

“Damn, you’re a braver man than me, JL,” Darcy says, “Ride home?” she asks. 

Jack shakes his head again, “I’m just gonna get changed here and then walk to the restaurant.”

“Okay,” Darcy says, “I’m not doing anything later so let me know if you want to chill or anything after.”

They take their skates off on the bench together, make sure the kids all get into the right cars with the right adults and then wave goodbye to each other. 

Neither Jack nor Bob have ever really cared for Italian, but neither one of them hates it. Jack thinks maybe his mom made the reservations as a kind of happy medium between the two of them. It’s a family restaurant but it still has a semi-fancy vibe to it, Jack trades his flannel for the light grey cardigan he keeps in his backpack for moments like this. 

Bob looks down at his menu, then across the table at Jack. Jack looks down at his menu. They haven’t said anything since Jack sat down five minutes ago. 

Bob clears his throat, “Euh, chicken parm looks good,” he says. 

“Yeah,” Jack answers. 

“Might get a salad,” Bob says again. 

Jack nods, they both know he won’t. He scans the menu, his old diet plan still on his mind. 

“Your mom says they have a good ravioli,” Bob scratches his chin.

Jack doesn’t like ravioli. He doesn’t tell his dad. 

The waitress comes by and takes their drink orders. Two glasses of water, Bob looks down at the drink menu. 

“I don’t know what you’re allowed to have,” he gestures uselessly at the beer selection. 

“Better not,” Jack says. 

“Right,” Bob nods, “Right, that makes sense.”

There’s exposed brick behind them, a crying baby somewhere to their left. An awkward silence hangs between them until the waitress comes back and takes their meal orders. Bob does indeed get the chicken parm and Jack gets grilled chicken and a salad. It’s boring, but he knows he’s going to choke it down awkwardly anyway. 

Without the menu to give him an excuse not to talk, he makes himself busy scooping the lemon out of his water and removing the peel. 

“Is there a reason you’re doing that?” Bob asks.

“If it’s bugging you you can just tell me to stop,” Jack says, interpreting judgement in Bob’s words. 

“It’s not,” Bob says.

“Then why does it matter?” Jack asks. 

“I just wanted to know,” Bob says, defensive. 

“Something to do with my hands,” Jack mumbles. 

“Is it uh…” Bob trails off but Jack knows what he wants to ask. 

“Yeah, it’s an anxiety thing,” Jack looks down and holds back an eye roll. 

“I wasn’t… I mean I was. But you don’t have to-”

“Whatever, Papa,” Jack cuts him off. 

“Jack, I’m just trying to talk to you.”

“Well can we talk about something else?” Jack drops the lemon peel into his water and takes a giant sip of it. Bob looks down at his hands, nodding. 

“Well um. Your mother told me you were talking to Darcy Halloran,” Bob says, “How is she.”

“Good,” Jack says, “She got hurt, so she’s working for her dad.”

“Shame,” Bob says and takes another sip of water. 

Jack nods. 

“I always liked her, not just because she was Haller’s daughter though I’m sure that helped. Sweet kid but a real firecracker. I never understood how you two got along so well”

Jack nods. 

Bob keeps talking, “I know your mother says you shouldn’t… be involved with anyone but I think it could be good for you to have… a girl,” Bob looks down at his water. 

Jack shakes his head, “It’s not like that,” he says firmly. 

“Oh,” Bob says, “Well that’s good too then.”

The waitress saves them by setting the food in front of them. Jack has an excuse not to talk as he shoves pieces of iceberg lettuce into his mouth. 

Bob studies him and Jack can feel it and Jack hates it. He feels the pity and the disgust, the disappointment. All the things that Bob won’t admit he thinks about his son. 

Bob sets his fork down. 

“Jack, I can’t talk to you if you don’t want to have a conversation. I get that it’s hard for you but you’re giving me one word answers here.”

Jack sets his fork down, “And what should we talk about, Papa?” Jack asks, palms suddenly sweaty. He feels the familiar twisting swooping sensation in his stomach. And then he’s trying to shove that feeling away, insecurity replaced with anger and he spits, “About hockey?” he asks, “Because I’m not gonna break if you ask me about hockey? Or do you want to talk about why we’re here in the first place? Because mom made us do this because you’re both still worried I’m going to do something dumb again?” Jack feels like shit the second the last word leaves his mouth, Bob’s face going pale. Body going eerily still. Jack doesn’t want to see his father cry. Jack has never seen his father cry. 

“This was a bad idea,” Jack says. He stands up, tucks his chair in, “Don’t follow me,” Jack says. 

He walks out of the restaurant, and jogs down the street just in case Bob had decided to follow him. Breathing heavy, he lines against the side of a building, a barbershop, he realizes. He doesn’t have pills in his pocket, he’s supposed to ask his mom when he needs them now, he hasn’t needed them so far. He needs them now. He doesn’t have them. If he calls his mom she’ll know he bolted. So he tries to breathe. His head clears mostly as he pulls out his phone.

Darcy answers after a couple rings. 

“Hey,” Darcy says, cheerful, “How was dinner.”

“Weird,” Jack says, “Do you still want to hang out?”

“Yeah. Where are you?”

Jack gives her the address and he waits. Within ten minutes, Jack is sliding into the passenger seat of Darcy’s SUV, a motion that he’s becoming more and more familliar with. Jack knows he can make himself feel normal, or at least look normal for other people. The pressure of not looking like a headcase forces him to smile. Maybe the smile is too wide, he hopes Darcy doesn’t notice. 

“Any plans in mind or is it just a drive around kind of night?” Darcy asks. 

“Whatever your feeling,” Jack says. 

So they crack their windows and Darcy plays music from a burned CD, loud enough that it drowns out her singing. And Jack sits up straight and he smiles and he makes sure he doesn’t drift off in space. They stop at a Mac’s convenience store and buy slushies, the largest size they have because it’s only 20 cents more expensive than a small, it’s only eight dollars but Jack insists on paying. They end up sitting in a parking lot behind a church, seats pushed back, music turned down, slushies in hand. 

“So Dad Bob didn’t want to drive you home?” Darcy finally asks. Jack notices her tongue stained blue. 

“I kind of ditched him,” Jack says. 

“Oh shit,” Darcy says, “Does that make me a kidnapper?”

Jack chuckles, “Legally probably not. I’ll be in trouble with my mom when I get home, I bet.”

“Hmm,” Darcy says, “I can’t remember the last time I’ve been in trouble.”

“Really?” Jack asks, he knows his tongue must be stained red by now, he can’t find it in himself to care about looking dumb. 

“Claire got sick when I was 12 so, understandably I think, everyone was just paying attention to her all the time so I got to do, pretty much whatever I wanted,” she says. 

“What happened to Claire?” Jack asks, “If it’s not weird to ask.”

“No,” Darcy says, “It’s weirder that no one ever does I think,” she takes a sip of her drink, “We both got mono, she was sick for a while, longer than me but we thought she’d end up being fine like I was. She ended up getting MS, they still don’t know why it developed in her and not me,” Darcy shrugs. 

“That’s uh… well,” Jack says, “Damn, that sucks.”

“It really does,” Darcy clicks her tongue and skips the CD to the next song, “Claire’s doing fine though, aside from the million doctors she goes to and the fact that my parents are overbearing as hell, but like, she’s still my sister. I’d give her both my kidneys but I’m also still allowed to make fun of her.”

“Both your kidneys?” Jack asks. 

“Yeah,” Darcy says, “Wouldn’t let her borrow my shirt though.”

“Weird,” Jack says. 

“Yep,” Darcy confirms, “She’s still a bitch, my bitch though.”

“I can’t imagine people just ignoring me,” Jack says. 

“Oh yeah, rub it in, superstar,” she punches him on the shoulder. 

“No, like I always wished people would stop paying attention to me for like five minutes,” he says. 

“Huh?” Darcy turns to him. 

“It was just constant,” Jack says, “Y’know, I was Bad Bob’s son or I was tearing it up in the the Q and people would invite me to parties and it seemed like they were only trying to hang out with me because they wanted be able to say they knew me… y’know once I made the league.”

“Grass is always greener,” Darcy says, “I wanted people to pay attention to me. Especially about hockey,” she says, “No one gave a shit that I was on the women’s hockey team at Mercyhurst. The guys were like gods though, a million parties, all the girls, better crowds and we were just kind of there.”

‘’You think there’s a happy medium?” Jack asks. 

“If there is I haven’t found it.”

It’s quiet, Darcy’s leaning forward slightly, head resting against her seat, Jack is in mostly the same position. Darcy leans forward, to adjust the stereo, Jack realizes too late, because he’s leaning forward to kiss her. 

Because that’s what he does when he cares about someone. When there’s a fondness in his chest, and maybe Bob’s right, maybe they would make a good couple. But Jack panics halfway through because Darcy looks surprised. She catches his lips with hers and she tastes like blue raspberry and her lips are cold, and her hand rests on his shoulder and she kisses him back and it’s not bad but it doesn’t feel…  _ right.  _ She puts her hand on his chest and shakes her head and Jack really panics even as she’s still kissing him, trying to let him down gently, he suspects. She pulls away.

Jack pulls away, he throws open the passenger door and decides he’ll walk home. 

He hears Darcy open her door. 

“JL!” She calls. 

Jack ignores her, it’s his mistake. 

“Come on this isn’t fair,” he hears her shuffling in the snow, her brace causing her to limp. 

“Jack stop!” she shouts. 

Jack turns around. She’s standing about two metres away from her, she doesn’t have her crutch with her, so she’s favouring her bad leg. 

“I’m so sorry,” Jack says. 

The first time he kissed Kenny, they were in Jack’s truck. And they’d kissed for a lot longer than Jack’s just kissed Darcy. Jack had been friends with Kenny first, just like Darcy, and they’d both leaned in, like Jack  _ thought  _ was happening with Darcy. And kissing Kenny, Jack thinks, has to have been one of his first mistakes. And here he is, making it again. But with a girl this time, it’s different because it’s with a girl, no one would look twice if it’s with a girl. 

“It’s  _ okay, _ ” Darcy says. 

“It was a mistake and it was… fuck I’m sorry. Things are gonna be weird now because you didn’t want that and I just did it and I thought… and I was wrong and I messed this up and you don’t like me like that.”

“Dude,” Darcy looks down at her boots, “I do like you,” she says, “Just not like…”

“Not like that,” Jack finishes for her, an anxious insistence in his voice, like he knows he ruins everything. 

“I know we’ve only been hanging out for like a week,” Darcy says, “But you’re my best friend here, why do you think I always have time to chill, you’re literally the only person who talks to me other than Claire. I love you man,” she says, “But uh,” she swallows, “I’m gay.”

Jack takes in a sharp breath, he feels tears poking at the back of his eyes. And it’s not because he was wrong, not because he feels rejected by Darcy but it’s because he’s never heard anyone say anything like that outloud to him and he knows he’s not the only one, but damn if it feels like it sometimes. 

“JL?” she asks. 

Jack nods, “I just uh. I thought I was supposed to… I dunno,” Jack says. 

“I swear it’s chill,” Darcy says, “Just because I don’t want to kiss you doesn’t mean I don’t like you.”

“Can I tell you something?” Jack asks. 

Darcy nods. 

So Jack tells her about Kent, not by name, but he still tells her how he panicked the first time they kissed and Kent chased him down and kissed him again and they both promised that they wanted it but also promised to keep it a secret. He tells her how he still went on dates with girls the whole time they were hooking up but it never really went anywhere because he felt like he was cheating on Kenny, even though they weren’t dating. He tells her how he never told his parents, how he worries every day that they’re going to ask him about it. He tells her about Bob in the restaurant assuming they were dating and how that put the idea in his head. He tells her that maybe that’s what put the idea of them kissing into his head, like that would make him normal somehow. Jack hasn’t hugged anyone but his mom in months, years if you don’t count Kenny and Jack’s trying not to count Kenny anymore. 

Darcy steps forward, with her arms in front of her, “I’m giving you a hug, that’s what’s happening here,” 

She laughs, Jack chuckles too, the kind of bitten back chuckle that comes out when he thinks he might cry if he laughs too hard. 

She tucks her head into his shoulder and squeezes. Her lower body injury hasn’t robbed her of any of her upper body strength, Jack thinks to himself. 

“Does anyone else know?” Darcy asks. 

Jack shakes his head, “Just the guy.”

Darcy nods. 

“I haven’t told my family yet. Not even Claire and we used to tell each other everything.”

Jack nods and Darcy starts to limp back to the car, Jack matches her pace. 

“I was out to my team, it wasn’t even a big deal there. Y’know? Like I’m not the first gay chick to play hockey, right?”

Jack nods, it’s a pressure he has that Darcy doesn’t, it’s an awareness that goes unspoken, 

“The idea of telling my family still scares me shitless though, no matter what players are out. No matter how many times Claire gives me the opportunity to just drop it nice and casual, I still feel like the world’s biggest wimp.”

“Damn that sucks,” Jack says, and they laugh, it was never really tense, not since they’ve hugged. 

“I think you’d like college,” Darcy says. 

“Where’d that come from?”

“Dunno,” Darcy says, “I’m just thinking about it. I kind of lost it when I found out I wouldn’t be able to play and I’d be better off coming home. It was like all this independence got snatched away from me.”

“What’s it like?”

“It was hard,” Darcy admits, “They want you to balance hockey and school and school is fucking hard and hockey is fucking hard. But I was starting to get a handle on it just before I got hurt.”

“Huh,” Jack says, “Most guys in the Q stopped caring about school by the time we were in eleventh grade.”

“Yeah,” Darcy says, “All hockey all the time. Sometimes I wish I got that. If a guy spends all his time thinking about hockey he’s working hard, if a girl does she’s slacking off and neglecting her other responsibilities.”

“I never thought about that,” Jack says. 

“You wouldn’t have to,” Darcy shrugs, “It’s like, all I want to do is play hockey. Even if I didn’t bust my knee I probably would have hung my skates up after college. I don’t have the options you did.”

“You know the options almost killed me, right?” Jack asks, not to be mean, not as some kind of gotcha. Because he knows it’s true, and he knows Darcy gets it. 

“We had the opposite problem then,” Darcy says, “Like, I dunno how to explain it, they asked too much of you guys and not enough of me and other girls. Maybe you should go to college,” she shrugs. 

“Maybe I should,” he agrees. 

“College hockey’s… different,” Darcy says. 

“I don’t want to play hockey,” Jack says. 

“You just keep saying that.”

“Do you think I’m lying.”

“To yourself, yeah.”

Jack rolls his eyes

“Are you always so dramatic?”

“Listen, if you actually pick up a stick and puck at our next practice, I’ll buy you dinner after.”

“I don’t need you to buy me dinner,” Jack says. 

“Just accept the deal JL, one on one, you and me, we’ll have fun,” Darcy says. 

“What about your knee?”

“I’m supposed to be trying to use it again as part of the rehab.”

“Does that include playing hockey?”

“Are you planning on checking?”

“No but…”

“It’ll be fine,” Darcy says, “Trust me. Wednesday night? At least bring your stick.”

“Fine,” Jack says, 

Darcy opens the driver’s side door, Jack slides into the passenger seat. 

“You’re not mad at me for kissing you, right?” Jack needs to make sure. 

“No,” Darcy says, “like, objectively, if you were going to freak out about your dad and then stick your tongue in someone’s mouth, I’m honoured you chose me,” Darcy says. 

“I wasn’t freaking out,” Jack says. 

“Lies!” Darcy declares. 

“Fine,” Jack admits, “And I didn’t just stick my tongue in your mouth, it was a real kiss.”

“I don’t think you want me criticizing your technique, JL, I don’t know if your ego could handle it.”

“Oh?” Jack says, fake offended as they head towards Jack’s end of town. Jack dreads talking to his parents, but for now, he watches Darcy skip a track on her CD, and he listens to her tell him that he kisses like his tongue is made of cement and he sticks his hand out the window so that the wind runs over her fingers.

“See you at practice,” Darcy says when she pulls into the Zimmermann driveway, “Good luck with Supermom,” she says. 

Jack waves at her from the porch and takes a deep breath before he walks inside. He braces for a shout that never comes. 

“Hi honey!” His mom calls from her office on the main floor. 

Jack leans against the doorframe. 

“How was dinner, your father told me you went out with a friend after, how was that?”

“Oh,” Jack says. He realizes that Bob must not have told Alicia yet. Thinks he’ll be in for it when Bob gets home. 

“Is he home yet?” Jack asks. 

Alicia, to Jack’s surprise, nods, “He says you had a lovely time.”

“Oh, we did,” Jack says. 

“I’m glad. And I’m glad your hockey friend is working out so well.”

“Yeah,” Jack mumbles. 

He walks past his parents room. His father’s sitting at the end of their bed looking up at their TV. he turns to look at Jack, Jack meets his gaze, eyes wide. He can’t wrap his head around why Bob would lie to Alicia about dinner. Bob just nods at Jack and Jack keeps walking to his new bedroom. Then it occurs to Jack, Bob doesn’t know how to explain what happened either. 

He falls asleep quickly, the kind of tired he can only be after a night that involved two panic attacks and eight different kinds of weird. He almost forgot he had a hockey practice too. It’s a miracle he stayed awake this long. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i once saw a summary on here that said "i wrote this for me, but you guys can read it if you want" and that's how i feel about this fic.   
> 1) yes i had to make Jack name the team the "Geese"  
> 2) Bob is doing his best but his best is less than great  
> 3)Jack is a mess and very much 18 and stupid and so is Darcy tbh and they are best buddies and Jack probably has trouble figuring out the difference between platonic and romantic feelings of fondness because he so rarely had friends  
> 4) also i am allowed to write about lesbians being messy because i am lesbians being messy in case anyone tries to come for me for the way i'm writing darcy and jack's relationship  
> 5)uhhhhh yeah  
> 6)i will insert women's hockey feelings into everything i write, thank you for asking.


End file.
